Return to home Facts & Links: http://www.50states.com/nevada.htm
Virtual Tourist: http://www.virtualtourist.com/North_America/USA/Nevada/?s=@959470737-10618Nevada means "snow-capped" in Spanish. The Mountain
Bluebird (Sialia Artica, also commonly known as the "Arctic
Blue-bird") is the official state bird and the Sagebrush is the
official flower. The state motto is "All for our country," and the
state slogan is "Battle Born." Its size is 110,561 square miles.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.E3)(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)
Before whites arrived the Indians around Pyramid lake called the
lake Cyui-ui Pah and called themselves Kuiyuidokado (eaters of the
Cui-ui fish).
(SFC, 12/28/02, p.A20)
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) owned about 85% of Nevada.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.37)230Mil BC
The Panthalassa Ocean covered much of what later became the western
United States. Sediments later called the Luning Formation were
deposited in what later became the mountain ranges of central
Nevada. Fossil ichthyosaurs included Shonisaurus popularis.
(NH, 6/01,
p.22)(www.shgresources.com/nv/symbols/fossil/)

225Mil BC Icthyosaur fossils first found in 1928
by Prof. Seimon W. Muller of Stanford 150 miles SE of Reno, dated to
this time. An inland sea linked to the Pacific and submerged
California and Nevada during the Triassic.
(SFEC, 4/23/00,
p.T10)(www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0849392.html)

145Mil BC The seas over Nevada receded.
(SFC, 12/2/06, p.A6)

112Mil BC-99Mil BC Most of Nevada was a flood plain and supported
dinosaurs including the raptor dromaesaur, sauropods,
tyrannosauroids and iguanodonts.
(SFC, 12/2/06, p.A6)

50Mil BC The collision of the North American and
Pacific Farallon plate, began lifting the Sierra Nevada about this
time. The Clear Lake basin of California rose above sea level. The
rise of the Sierra Nevada continued for another 20 million years.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C8)(SSFC, 1/16/11, p.C2)

15590 BC Saber tooth cats roamed the hills north
of Las Vegas about this time. Fossils of the front legs of such a
cat were identified in 2012.
(SFC, 12/17/12, p.A5)

c10,000BCE Petroglyphs dating to this time were
later discovered in the Big Smokey Valley of Nevada, where Lake
Tolyabe and Lake Tonopah provided for human habitation.
(USDI, 2004)

8000 BC In Nevada about this time the Lathrop
Wells Cone erupted. It is less than a mile from Yucca Mountain, a
site later proposed for the long-term storage of radioactive waste.
(Smith., 5/95, p.44)

c0AD The last small lake disappeared
from the Death Valley basin about this time. At least 4 lakes
covered the valley floor in Earth's history.
(SFEC, 1/3/99, p.T5)

1843-1844 John C. Fremont discovered that Nevada
lies within the Great Basin, where all waters run inward without
outlet to an ocean.
(SFEC, 10/31/99, BR p.10)

1844 John Fremont discovered
Pyramid Lake in Nevada. For a number of reasons the lake’s native
trout went extinct in the 1940s. Federal officials in 2006 began
restocking the lake with the native Lahontan cutthroat found near
Pilot Peak and the trout fluorished.
(SFC, 5/1/13, p.E8)

1845 John C. Fremont led his
3rd surveying expedition through the central Great Basin of Nevada.
He was accompanied by Thomas E. Breckenridge, a Missouri fur
trapper.
(BLM, 2001)(ON, 12/06, p.5)

1846 Oct 31, Heavy snows
trapped the Donner party in the eastern Sierras near what is now
Truckee.
(SFC, 7/20/96,
p.C1)(www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Chronology.htm)

1846 Dec 16, In desperation 10
men and 5 women of the Donner Party left on snowshoes to cross the
Sierra Nevada. The 5 women and 2 men survived. All but one of the
dead were eaten. Of the 89 members in the whole group 42 died.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.C1)

1846 The Applegate Trail across
northwest Nevada and northeast California was blazed as a southern
approach to Oregon's Willamette Valley.
(SFEC, 1/23/00, p.T7)

1849 The first white settlement
was by Mormons at Genoa near Carson City, then called Mormon
Station.
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)

1849 Peter Lassen pioneered a
new route to California that bypassed the 40 Mile Desert in Nevada.
The trail led from Nevada to Oregon and was combined with another
trail that led past his ranch and trading post near Chico. The trail
however led across more desert and came to be called "The Death
Route."
(SFC, 8/22/98, p.A13)(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A1,9)

c1850 Peter Lassen pioneered a new route to
California that bypassed the 40 Mile Desert in Nevada.
(SFC, 8/22/98, p.A13)

1853 Kit Carson herded some
7,000 sheep through Eagle Valley, where Carson City was later
founded.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, p.T7)

1856 Jan 3, John Thompson
(1827-1876), Norway-born immigrant, departed Placerville, Ca., with
skies and snow shoes on his first mail run to Carson City, Nevada.
By the spring of 1857 he made 31 crossings of the Sierra to deliver
mail.
(ON, 4/10, p.7)

1859 May 26, Captain James
Simpson and his party, looking for the shortest route across Nevada,
crossed the Hickison Summit into Big Smoky Valley. Their path was
later followed by the Pony Express (1860) and the Overland Mail and
Stage (1861).
(BLM, 2001)

1859 Jun 11, Comstock silver
load was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada. Prospector James
Finney stumbled across thick, bluish clay in western Nevada. A
fellow minor, Henry Comstock, gave his name to the lode, the most
lucrative silver ore mine in history. Ott’s Assay Office in Nevada
City, Ca., first assayed samples of the rich Comstock Lode of
Nevada. Four Irishmen known as the Bonanza Kings bought up shares in
the Comstock mines and became rich. They were John Mackay, James
Fair, James Flood, and William O’Brian. Ore from the Comstock lode
was hauled by horse-drawn wagon over Donner Pass to SF.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T6)(SFC, 4/14/96, T-3)(SFC,
5/19/96,City Guide, p.17)(RFH-MDHP, 1969, p.107)(SC, 6/11/02)

1859 Colonel Frederick W.
Lander led an expedition to the West to survey a railroad route
across Nevada to California. Artist Alfred Bierstadt accompanied the
expedition.
(www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/sherman2.html)

1859-1860 The International Hotel was built in
Virginia City. In 1863 it was taken down to make room for a larger
version. The original was moved to Austin, Nevada.
(ACC, 2004)

1860 John Wagner established
Nevada's longest-operating brewery in Carson City during the rush to
Virginia City. The Carson Brewing Co. built a new two-story brewery
in 1865 in the commercial form of Classical Revival, on the corner
of Division and King streets, where it was later turned into an arts
and performance center.
(www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/nevada/bre.htm)(SSFC,
11/19/06, p.F10)

1861 Mar 2, The Territory of
Nevada was created by an act of Congress. The first elected governor
of the state was Henry G. Blasdel
(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)(SFEC, 7/9/00, DB p.67)

1861 Orion Clemens was
appointed Secretary of the Territory of Nevada. He took along his
young brother, Sam Clemens (Mark Twain).
(SFEC, 9/17/00, Z1 p.2)

1862 Mar 2, Gen’l. Frederick W.
Lander (b.1821), transcontinental engineer and Union General, died
of “congestion of the brain" at Paw Paw, Virginia. He was the chief
engineer of the Central Overland route. In 2000 Gary L. Ecalbarger
authored “Frederick W. Lander: The Great Natural American Soldier."
(www.picturehistory.com/find/p/16832/mcms.html)(ACC, 2004)

1862 Dec 19, Lander County,
Nevada, was formed and took in the eastern third of the state with
the 1st county seat at Jacobsville. It was later broken up into
Lander, Eureka, White Pine and Elko.
(ACC, 2004)

1862 Austin, Nevada, was born
when a horse kicked loose a rock revealing rich silver ore.
(ACC, 2004)
1862 David Walley of New York
discovered natural hot springs about 90 miles south of Carson City.
(SSFC, 12/18/05, p.F4)

1863 Feb 3, Samuel Clemens
became Mark Twain for 1st time. In Nevada the Territorial Enterprise
in Comstock printed some humorous letters from a reader named
“Josh." The editor hired the man, who was Samuel Clemens, for $25 a
week. Clemens accepted and changed his pen name to Mark Twain. Sam
had dropped the penname "Josh" and first signed himself "Mark Twain"
in a letter written on January 31, 1863. The Territorial Enterprise
published the letter in its Tuesday, February 3, 1863 issue.
(http://www.twainquotes.com/18630203t.html)
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.6)

1863 In Nevada the Livingston
Exchange, a saloon, opened in Genoa. It later became known as the
Genoa Bar and Saloon.
(SSFC, 6/22/14, p.N22)

1864 Oct 31, Nevada became the
36th state under a proclamation signed by Pres. Lincoln.
(AP, 10/31/97)(LVRJ, 11/1/97, p.1B)(HN, 10/31/98)

1864 The Clemens House was
built in Carson City, Nev., by Orion Clemens, brother of author
Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Orion served as the
first and only Territorial Secretary (1861-1864), and at times,
acting governor of the Nevada Territory.
(SSFC, 11/19/06,
p.F10)(www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/nevada/ori.htm)

1864 William Sharon (44) was
sent from SF to Virginia City as manager of the Nevada branch of the
Bank of California.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)

1864 Ruel C. Gridley (d.1870),
owner of the Gridley Store in Austin, Nevada, lost an election bet
and had to carry a 50 lb. sack of flour the length of Austin to the
tune of “John Brown’s Body." The sack was auctioned and the proceeds
went to the Sanitary Fund, a forerunner to the Red Cross, to help
relieve suffering created by the Civil War. The sack was resold many
times and soon other towns called for a similar auction. The last
auction was at the St. Louis World’s Fair.
(ACC, 2004)

1865 William Brown opened the
Boston Saloon in Virginia City for black patrons. It burned down in
an 1876 fire.
(AM, 11/00, p.23)

1868 The Central Pacific
Railroad came through Reno. The town had been founded on the banks
of the Truckee River by Myron Lake and was named after a Civil War
general. Lake's land was bought up by Charles Crocker, who had
surveyors lay out streets and a town for which he sold lots. The
Crocker land eventually came under the control of the Pacific
Improvement Co., controlled by Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins and
Stanford.
(SFC, 2/16/00, p.A12)

1868 The Virginia and Truckee
railroad line was built to serve Virginia City, Nv., site of the
richest silver strike in history. Ted Wurm (d.2004) later
co-authored with Harre W. Demoro "Silver Short Line," a history of
the line.
(SSFC, 2/29/04, p.A25)

1868 St. Peter’s Episcopal
Church was built in Carson City, Nev.
(SSFC, 11/19/06, p.F10)

1869 The courthouse in Austin,
Nevada, was built.
(ACC, 2004)

1869 Gambling in Nevada was
legalized.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)

1869 The first assay report
from Berlin Canyon was filed.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.T10)

1870 Nov 4, Reuel Gridley,
supporter of the Civil War Sanitary Commission, died in poverty. He
had been a co-partner of the Gridley, Robert and Jacob Store in
Austin, Nevada.
(AHS, brochure)

1870 Palisade, Nevada, was
established and became a railroad transfer point for ore from nearby
mines.
(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A2)

1870 A US Mint began operations
in Carson City, Nev., and continued to 1893, after which it was
turned into the Nevada State Museum.
(SSFC, 11/19/06, p.F10)

1870s George Hearst (d.1891)
built the Charcoal Kilns in Death Valley.
(CHA, 1/2001)
c
1871 Sep 9, A cornerstone was
laid for the Lander County Courthouse in Austin, Nevada.
(ACC, 2004)

1871 The silver-domed state
capital in Carson City was completed. It was completely rebuilt
between 1977-1981.
(SFEC, 7/25/99, p.T7)

1871 In Reno, Nevada, Jacob W.
Davis (born as Jacob Youphes), a Jewish tailor from Latvia, custom
made a pair of work pants using rivets to reinforce the pockets.
(ON, 4/05, p.11)

1872 Jul 2, Jacob W. Davis of
Reno, Nevada, sent Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco a sample
of his work pants and a business proposal for Strauss to apply for a
patent in exchange for a half share in the patent. Davis soon sold
his half share to Strauss and moved to San Francisco to supervise
the manufacture of the work pants.
(ON, 4/05, p.11)

1872 Mark Twain wrote "Roughing
It." It chronicles the night he and 2 friends spent in a blizzard
only 15 steps from the Desert Wells Trading Station in Nevada.
(SFEM, 9/15/96, p.24)(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.19)

1872 In Nevada Francis Marion
"Borax" Smith (d.1931) found borax in Peel’s Marsh. In 1890 he
developed the Pacific Coast Borax Company to transport the borax on
a 1-day, 169-mile trip from Death Valley to a railhead at Mohave
with the famed 20-mule team. He later consolidated the SF Bay Area
trolley lines into the Key System.
(SFC, 11/6/98, p.D5)(SSFC, 10/20/02, p.A19)

1873 The "Big Bonanza," a huge
silver deposit, was found by miners working for the Comstock Kings
in Virginia City. The 1999 book "The Roar and the Silence" by Ronald
James described the silver boom in Virginia City.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)

1874 Trinity Church in Nevada
City was established.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A20)

1874 The Nevada state
legislature overrode the Governor’s veto and approved a railroad
from Austin to Battle Mountain. Construction only began 4 ½
years later.
(ACC, 2004)

1875 William Sharon of SF was
elected to a 6-year term as Senator. It is believed that he spent
some $1 million to get elected.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)

1876 The Fourth Ward School in
Virginia City, a gem of Second Empire architecture, was built on C
Street.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)

1878 A tunnel to drain and
ventilate the silver mines at the Comstock Lode was completed by
Adolph Sutro.
(G, Winter 98/99, p.1)

1879 The Bliss Mansion was
built in Carson City for Duane Bliss, a lumber magnate. He supplied
lumber to the Comstock mines.
(SSFC, 11/19/06, p.F10)

1879 Adolph Sutro returned to
SF after becoming a millionaire from building a tunnel at the silver
mines of the Nevada Comstock Lode.
(G, Winter 98/99, p.1)

1879 In Nevada the "Great Fire
of Reno" claimed six lives.
(AP, 11/5/06)

1880 Feb 9, Austin, Nevada,
extended its city limits in order to obtain a railroad subsidy that
required the completion of a road by midnight.
(ACC, 2004)

1880 Jacob Bressman left
Pennsylvania with his family and homesteaded in the what later
became Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.C5)

1885 Dec, A Nevada Circuit
court reversed the 1884 SF ruling against William Sharon and ruled
that the marriage certificate and letters of Sarah Althea Hill were
forgeries. Hill later married one of her attorneys, David Terry.
(Ind, 7/1/00,5A)

1885 Piper's Opera House in
Virginia City was rebuilt a third time. It had been founded by John
Piper.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)

1885 Emma Nevada (d.1940),
opera singer born in Austin, Nevada, as Emma Wixom, returned to
America and her home town for a triumphal tour.
(ACC, 2004)

1887 Ely, Nevada, was
incorporated.
(SFC, 8/21/02, p.A12)

1887 Charles Lux died. His
firm, Miller and Lux, by this time owned some 700,000 head of cattle
in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Over 700 miles of private telegraph
lines connected their ranches.
(SSF, 1976, p.2)

c1890s In the late 1800s
soldiers found garnets in the mountains of eastern Nevada and named
the area the Ruby Mountains.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.C4)

1894 A fireball was seen
streaking across the skies of southern Nevada. 14 years alter a
prospector found a 1.45 kg meteorite that was named the Quinn Canyon
meteorite.
(www.viamagazine.com/top_stories/articles/treasures_rock_jan10.asp)

1895 The Berlin Mine was
established.
(SFEC, 4/23/00, p.T10)

1897 Anson Phelps Stokes, an
eccentric business man in the Reese River Valley, built his 3-story
Stokes Castle in Austin, Nevada. He built the 92-mile Nevada Central
Railroad from Battle Mountain to Austin.
(SFCM, 3/28/04, p.43)(ACC, 2004)(SSFC, 6/22/14,
p.N13)

1900 Robert LeRoy Parker and
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (aka Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and
their Wild Bunch went to Fort Worth after their last holdup of the
First National Bank at Winnemucca, Nevada. They posed for pictures
at John Swartz’s photo studio.
(HT, 4/97, p.45)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)

1900 Major silver and gold
deposits were found at Tonopah.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, DB p.67)

1902 The US Newlands Act
established the Bureau of Reclamation and began to enact some of the
ideas of John Wesley Powell concerning control of water resources in
17 western states. Results included the Newlands Irrigation Project
in Nevada’s Fallon area that diverted water from the Carson and
Truckee Rivers to new farmland.
(HFA, ‘96, p.128)(SFEC, 7/9/00, DB p.67)(SFC,
12/28/02, p.A20)

1903 Major silver and gold
deposits were found at Goldfield.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, DB p.67)

1904 California’s Wells Fargo
merged with the Nevada Bank, owned by Isaias Hellman, making it one
of the West’s largest financial institutions.
(SSFC, 11/30/08, Books p.3)

1905 Las Vegas, a Mormon
outpost, railroad burg and silver mining camp, rose to township
status.
(SFEM, 4/30/00, p.19)(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T8)
1905 In Nevada the Virginia
Street Bridge was built over the Truckee River in Reno. In 2014 it
was set for demolition and reconstruction as part of the Truckee
River flood project.
(SFC, 5/28/14, p.E2)

1906 Sep 3, Joe Gans
(1874-1910), born as Joseph Gant, defended his lightweight boxing
title against Battling Nelson in Goldfield, Nevada. He was the first
African-American World Boxing Champion, reigning continuously as
World Lightweight Champion from 1902 to 1908. In 2012 William Gildea
authored “The Longest Fight: In the Ring with Joe Gans, Boxing’s
First African-American Champion."
(Econ, 7/14/12,
p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gans)

1906 The Hotel Nevada opened in
Las Vegas shortly after the rail lines from Los Angeles and Salt
Lake City met nearby.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.B1)

1908 The Goldfield Hotel was
completed in Goldfield, Nevada, to accommodate a gold-mining frenzy.
In 2004 the hamlet had shrunk to 356 people from 25,000 at its peak.
(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.A1)

1910 Jul 4, African-American
Jack Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in the 15th round of a
heavyweight boxing match in Reno, Nevada. As Johnson entered the
ring a band played “All Coons Look Alike to Me." Johnson’s victory
prompted race riots in major cities across the United States leaving
as many as 26 people dead. Jack London covered the match and coined
the phrase "The great white hope" in his story.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.B10)(Econ, 6/21/08, p.104)(ON,
4/09, p.7)

1910 Oct 1, At midnight a
strict anti-gambling law became effective in Nevada. It even forbid
the western custom of flipping a coin for the price of a drink.
Illegal but accepted gambling flourished until 1931 when the Nevada
Legislature approved a legalized gambling bill authored by Phil
Tobin, a Northern Nevada rancher.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB
p.64)(http://www.lvol.com/lvoleg/hist/lvhist.html)

1911 Nevada, in an effort to
raise revenue, began offering divorces in 6 weeks, the quickest in
the US.
(Econ, 7/10/10, SR p.11)

1911-1931 The Nevada state ban on gambling went
largely ignored.
(SSFC, 5/8/05, p.F4)

1922 The Mizpah Hotel was built
in Reno, Nev. In 1984 it was placed on the National Register of
Historic Places.
(AP, 11/5/06)

1922 The Colorado River Compact
allocated 7.5 million acre-feet of water from the upper basin states
(Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico) to be delivered to the
lower basin sates (California, Arizona and Nevada) plus the rights
to divert another 1 million acre-feet from the river’s lower
tributaries.
(SFEC, 8/24/97, p.A10)(SFCM, 7/17/05, p.6)

1923 Mar 5, Montana and Nevada
passed the U.S.'s first old age pension grants, giving $25 per
month.
(HN, 3/5/98)

1924 Feb 8, The gas chamber was
used for the first time to execute a murderer. Major D.A. Turner of
the US Medical Corps used hydrocyanic gas on an alleged Chinese Tong
member named Gee Jon at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City, Nev.
(HN, 2/8/98)(SFC, 6/27/98, p.E4)(AP, 2/8/99)

1937-1955 Gov. Pat McCarran entered legislation at
every session on behalf of Italian American squatters on reservation
lands of the Pyramid Paiutes.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)

1939 George Whittel Jr.
(1881-1969), heir to a SF family wealthy from the gold rush,
completed his Thunderbird Lodge at Lake Tahoe. He had acquired some
30,000 acres along the Nevada shore since 1936. It was begun in 1937
and designed Nevada architect Frederick De Longchamps. He deeded
most of the land to the US Forest Service.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.C8)(SFC, 7/21/07,
p.F1)(www.thunderbirdlodge.org/theman.html)

1941 The El Rancho Vegas opened
with 63 rooms. It was the first major resort built on the Las Vegas
strip. It was destroyed by fire in 1960.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)

1942 Jan 16, Actress Carole
Lombard and her mother were among some 20 people killed when their
plane crashed near Las Vegas while returning from a tour to promote
war bonds.
(AP, 1/16/00)

1942 Dec 21, The US Supreme
Court ruled all states had to recognize divorces granted in Nevada.
(AP, 12/21/05)

1945 Bill Miller (d.2002 at 98)
bought the Las Vegas hotel Riviera. It closed in 1953 to make way
for the Palisades Parkway.
(SFC, 12/17/02, p.A23)

1946 Dec 26, The Flamingo
casino opened. Billy Wilkerson designed the Flamingo and sold a
controlling interest to Bugsy Siegel when his money ran out. It was
the 3rd hotel casino built on the Las Vegas strip.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T8)

1946 The Nevada Club (d.1997)
in downtown Reno opened. It used slot machines made by the Jennings
company of Chicago.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, p.D3)

1947 Dec, In Reno the Mapes
Hotel, a 12-story art deco building, was constructed for use as a
hotel, casino, restaurant and entertainment facility under one roof.
It became vacant in 1982 and was added to the National Register of
Historic Places in 1984. Implosion was scheduled for Jan 30, 2000.
(SFC, 12/23/99, p.C4)(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A11)

1947 The Las Vegas Vic was
unveiled. It was replaced by a newer version in 1951 and its
sidekick, Vegas Vicky (aka Sassy Sally), was built in 1980.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)
1947 Kirk Kerkorian
(1917-2015), Fresno-born former RAF pilot, bought a tiny charter
line and renamed it Trans Int’l. Airlines. Nearly two decades later
he took the TIA public and used cash from the stock to build the
Int’l. Hotel (later renamed the Westgate Las Vegas). In the 1970s he
opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
(SFC, 6/17/15, p.D5)

1948 The Pine Lodge was
established in Lamoille at the foot of the Ruby Mountains.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.C5)

1949 A.J. Liebling, New York
reported, arrived in Nevada for Reno divorce, which required a
6-week residency. He began a series of articles for the New Yorker
on the Pyramid Paiutes and their struggle with Italian American
squatters over water rights. In 1999 the collected stories were
edited by Elmer Rusco and published under the title "A Reporter At
Large: Dateline: Pyramid Lake, Nevada."
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)

1950 Sep 23, Congress adopted
the Internal Security Act, which provided for registration of
communists. The Act was ruled later unconstitutional by the US
Supreme Court. US Sen. Pat McCarran (Nevada) legislated the Internal
Security Act, which included a jumble of restrictions on speech and
association. Pres. Truman attempted an unsuccessful veto of the
McCarran Act, which gave the government unprecedented powers.
(WSJ, 3/18/99, p.W17)(MC, 9/23/01)(WSJ, 10/13/04,
p.D18)

1951 Jan 27, Atomic testing
began in the Nevada desert as an Air Force B-50D from a base in New
Mexico dropped a one-kiloton nuclear bomb on Frenchman Flats, Clark
County, 65 miles NW of Las Vegas. Over the next 40 years 928 nuclear
devices were exploded at the site.
(AP, 1/27/98)(WSJ, 4/12/05, p.D8)(www.ntshf.org)

1951 Feb 1, The third A-bomb
test was completed in the desert of Nevada.
(HN, 2/1/99)

1951 Oct 24, Dr. Albert W.
Bellamy, chief of Radiological Services for the California State
Civil Defense, held a press conference to assure state residents
that there would be no ill effects from the atomic test explosions
near Las Vegas.
(SFC, 10/19/01, WB p.6)

1951 Nov 1, The 1st atomic
explosion, witnessed by troops, was at Yucca Flat, Nevada. Members
of the 1st Battalion, 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment from Ft.
Campbell, Kentucky, were the first unwitting test participants to be
sent to that facility by the Atomic Energy Commission and The
Department of Defense in a series of nuclear tests, code named
"Buster-Jangle."
(www.angelfire.com/tx/atomicveteran/exposed.html)

1951 Benny Binion, a former
bootlegger and numbers runner from Dallas, went to Las Vegas and
bought the El Dorado casino and hotel. He renamed it The Horseshoe
and promised to take any bet, no matter how high. In 1953 he was put
into prison for income tax evasion and served 3 years and 3 months.
(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A5)

1951-1962 The US conducted 100 nuclear atmospheric
tests at the Nevada Test Site over this period.
(AH, 6/02, p.72)

1951-1992 Some 928 bombs were exploded over this
period at the Nevada Test Site. In 1999 the area began to be used as
a training ground against terrorism.
(SFC, 10/22/01, p.A1)

1954 A.J. Liebling, New York
reporter, returned to Pyramid Lake and wrote some stories on mustang
buzzing, the practice of chasing wild mustangs with small planes
into corrals to sell them for pet food.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)

1954 The Congo Room of the
Sahara Casino gave birth to the lounge show concept. Ragnar Qvale
(d.2001), actor turned architect, designed the original Sahara
Hotel.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T7)(SFC, 10/2/01, p.A15)

1954 The 1st major neon sign in
Las Vegas was the Young Electric sign Co.’s project for the Boulder
Club.
(SSFC, 11/17/02, p.C12)

1955 Mar 6, A US Atomic Energy
Spokesman said a cloud from the atomic blast at Nevada’s Yucca Flat
passed over the Central California coastline.
(SFC, 3/4/05, p.F3)

1955 Apr, The Riviera Casino
opened.
(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.31)

1955 May 5, The US detonated a
29-kiloton nuclear device in Nevada. "Apple 2" was the 2nd of 40
tests of Operation Cue, meant to study the effects of a nuclear
explosion on a typical American community.
(AH, 6/02, p.72)

1955 May, The Moulin Rouge
opened at a cost of about $2 million under a group of investors led
by NY restaurateur Harry Ruben. It was highly successful with an
all-black staff except for the card dealers. It closed down after 6
months due to possible skimming and/or pressure from other casinos
who lost customers due to the Moulin’s successful late night
entertainment. In 1992 it was granted a listing on the National
Registry of Historic Places.
(SFC, 4/28/01, p.31)

1955 Jun, The Dunes Casino
opened.
(SSFM, 4/29/01, p.31)

1955 Noel Coward, British
playwright, actor and composer, accepted a $35,000 per week offer to
do a cabaret act at the Las Vegas Desert Inn.
(SFC, 12/1/99, p.E1)

1955 The Hotel Nevada in Las
Vegas was purchased by 5 investors from SF and renamed the Golden
Gate Hotel with a street level casino.
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.B1)

1955 Union Canyon was
designated as the Ichthyosaur Paleontological State Monument and in
1970 became the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.
(NH, 6/01, p.24)

1957 Jun 24, A 37-kiloton
nuclear fission bomb, code-named Priscilla, was exploded in the
Nevada desert at Frenchman Flat. The security of a bank vault was
tested in the experiment. At this time the US was manufacturing 10
nuclear bombs a day.
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.E1)

1957 Sep 19, The United States
conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named "Rainier,"
in the Nevada desert.
(AP, 9/19/07)

1958 The film "I Want To Live"
starred Susan Hayward as the death-row inmate Barbara Graham. It was
directed by Robert Wise and based on the Santo gang murder trial in
Nevada County.
(TVM, 1975, p.270)(SFEC, 3/1/98, DB p.49)(SFC,
7/15/98, p.A20)

1958 The 1,500 room Stardust
casino-hotel opened in Las Vegas, Nv. In 2006 Boyd Gaming Corp.
planned to tear it down and build a $4 billion complex.
(SFC, 1/5/06, p.C1)

1959 Sep 12, NBC launched
"Bonanza," the first color western on TV. 428 episodes were produced
and the show ran to 1973. 431 episodes were filmed at the 570-acre
site in Incline Village, Nevada. Michael Landon (d.1991) played
Little Joe, Lorne Greene (d.1987) played Ben Cartwright, and Dan
Blocker (d.1972) played Hoss. [see Jan 16, 1973]
(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A12)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.A29)(SSFC,
8/8/04, p.D2)

1960s Chandler Laughlin (aka
Travus T. Hipp) and a group of Berkeley friends took over a Virginia
City building and began the Red Dog Saloon. They imported music by
the Charlatans with Dan Hicks on drums and advertised with a poster
later called "The Seed" for its influence on psychedelic art.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, p.T6)

1961 Sep 15, The US resumed
underground nuclear testing. Operation Nougat began a series of 45
nuclear tests conducted (with one exception) at the Nevada Test
Site.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Nougat)(SSFC, 6/9/02,
p.F4)

1961 Geologist John Sealy
Livermore (1918-2013), along with a Newmont Mining colleague,
discovered widely dispersed gold particles near Carlin, Nevada.
Their find became known as the Carlin Trend. By 2013 it had produced
over 70 million ounces of gold valued at around $85 billion.
(SFC, 3/13/13, p.E5)

1962 Apr 25,
Operation Dominic began with a test blast on Christmas Island. The
operation was a series of 105 nuclear test explosions conducted in
1962 and 1963 by the United States. Those conducted in the Pacific
are sometimes called Dominic I. The blasts in Nevada are known as
Dominic II.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Dominic_I_and_II)

1962 Jul 6, The US tested a 104
kiloton nuclear device in Nevada in "Project Sedan" and blew a hole
1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep. It was one of many "Plowshare"
experiments to see if atomic detonations could be used for large
scale peaceful purposes.
(SFC,12/23/97, p.A3)

1962 Jul 7-1962 Jul 17,
Operation Sunbeam was a series of four nuclear tests conducted at
the United States of America's Nevada Test Site.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Sunbeam)

1962 Dec 7, Great Britain
performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
(MC, 12/7/01)

1963 Amtrak began offering its
weekend Fun Train service from the SF Bay Area to Reno.
(SSFC, 1/22/06, p.E5)

1964 Aug 6, In Eastern Nevada a
bristlecone pine tree, Pinus longaeva, near Wheeler Peak was cut
down for scientific study of its age. The tree had been named
Prometheus (WPN-114) for its age which turned out to be about 4,900
years.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, Z1 p.1,4)

1964 Don Laughlin sold his 101
Club in Las Vegas.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T6)

1966 Jul 28, Operation
Latchkey, a series of 38 nuclear test explosions conducted in 1966
and 1967, began with the Saxon blast at the Nevada Test Site. All
but one of the tests took place in Nevada.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Operation_Latchkey)

1966 Oct 15, US Congress passed
the Endangered Species Preservation Act. It was expanded in 1973 as
the Endangered Species Act. The Devils Hole Pupfish of Death Valley
were among the first species protected. By 1972 only 124 remained.
By 2007 only 42 were left.
(www.fws.gov/endangered/1966listing.html)

1966 Caesars Casino opened with
its 1,000 seat Circus Maximus showroom. Andy Williams performed on
opening night. Dave Rogers (d.1998) was the sound engineer and made
tapes of many of the live shows.
(WSJ, 3/19/00, p.A1)

1966 Don Laughlin opened his
Riverside Hotel and Casino in South Pointe, Nevada. The town was
renamed Laughlin in 1968. In 2006 it was reported that Laughlin
planned have his body frozen upon death and had created a personal
revival trust to guarantee an income should he be revived in the
future.
(SFEC, 10/10/99, p.T6)(WSJ, 1/21/06, p.A1)

1967 Feb 10, The 25th Amendment
to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and
succession, went into effect as Minnesota and Nevada adopted it.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 2/10/08)

1967 The Mustang Ranch brothel
opened in Storey County. Joe Conforte, a one-time cab driver in San
Francisco who used to deliver his passengers to prostitutes in the
1960s, took over the 104-room brothel when prostitution was illegal
in Nevada. The government closed it in 1990 following bankruptcy for
IRS taxes. It reopened in 1992. [see 1971]
(SFC, 8/10/99, p.A3)(AP, 7/1/05)

1967 In Incline Village,
Nevada, the Ponderosa Ranch Western Studio and Theme Park opened to
the public. "Bonanza," the first color western on TV had begun
filing there in 1959. In 2004 it was sold to PeopleSoft founder
David Duffield.
(SSFC, 8/8/04, p.D2)

1968 Apr 26, The United States
exploded a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called "Boxcar" beneath the
Nevada desert.
(AP, 4/26/08)

1968 Jun 7, Michael Robert
Smith (25) escaped from California’s Soledad prison while serving
time for a robbery conviction. He headed to Nevada, then New Jersey
and into a marriage that didn't work out. In 2001 Smith moved to a
tiny trailer in a heavily wooded area of Creek County, Okla., where
he was recaptured in 2006.
(AP, 5/20/06)

1969 Jul 2, Kirk Kerkorian
(1917-2015) opened his International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, the
largest hotel in the world. It later became the Las Vegas Hilton. He
built the world's largest hotel in Las Vegas three times: the
International Hotel, the MGM Grand Hotel (1973) and the MGM Grand
(1993).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_Las_Vegas_Resort_%26_Casino)(WSJ,
4/21/07, p.A6)(Econ, 6/27/15, p.57)
1969 Jul 2, Barbra Streisand
(b.1942) opened for a 4-week engagement at the Las Vegas
International Hotel.
(www.barbrafile.com/6169.htm)

1970 Jan 14, Diana Ross and the
Supremes performed their last concert together, at the Frontier
Hotel in Las Vegas.
(AP, 1/14/00)

1970 Mar 23, US performed the
Shaper nuclear test in Nevada.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mandrel)

1970 Apr 29, Andre Agassi,
tennis star and winner of an Olympic gold medal in 1996, was born in
Las Vegas, Nev.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Agassi)

1970 Lester "Benny" Binion,
owner of the Horseshoe Casino, founded the annual World Series of
Poker.
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.B3)

1970 Kirk Kerkorian opened his
International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, the largest hotel in the
world. It later became the Las Vegas Hilton.
(WSJ, 4/21/07,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Hotel_%28Las_Vegas%29)

1971 Hunter S. Thompson
(1937-2005, "gonzo journalist," wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas." It was made into a film in 1998. The term gonzo was 1st
applied to Thompson by his journalist friend Bill Cardoso (d.1006 at
68). The term had kicked around Boston for some time and was used by
youth in the 1950s to describe something as over the top.
(SFC, 5/22/98, p.C1)(SSFC, 3/5/06, p.B7)

1971 The Mustang Ranch became
the state's first legal bordello.
(AP, 7/1/05)

1971 Michael Oliver, a Las
Vegas-based libertarian activist, created the Republic of Minerva by
dumping sand on the Minerva Reefs 310 miles southwest of Tonga. He
proclaimed independence in 1972, but Tonga annexed the place and it
soon sank.
(Econ, 12/24/05, p.84)

1972 Artist Michael Heizer
(b.1944) began work in Nevada on his monumental earth art titled
City, one of the largest sculptures ever created.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_%28artwork%29)(SFC, 6/12/15,
p.A12)

1973 Mar 23, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Toggle)

1973 Dec 24, The MGM Grand in
Las Vegas opened to the public.
(www.vegas4visitors.com/museum/mgmgrand.htm)

1974 May, William Bennett
(d.2002 at 78) and William Pennington bought Circus Circus
Enterprises. They took the company public in 1983.
(SFC, 12/24/02,
p.A13)(www.answers.com/topic/mandalay-resort-group-1?cat=biz-fin)

1974 Gladys Mapes, aka "Mrs.
Reno," died. The Mapes Hotel went to her son Charles Jr. who lost
the property in 1980 to foreclosure following some unwise
investments.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A11)

1975 The Salt Wells and the
Lazy B Ranch brothels opened in Churchill County, Nevada.
(WSJ, 10/20/04, p.A12)

1976 Feb 26, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/USA-ntests3.html)

1976 Nov 22, Phillip Garrido
kidnapped Katie Hall in South Lake Tahoe and drove her to Reno,
where he raped her at a storage unit. Garrido was convicted in 1977
and sentenced to 50 years in prison. He was paroled in 1988. In 1991
He kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard (11) in South Lake Tahoe and kept her
in Antioch, Ca., until his arrest in 2009.
(SFC, 9/2/09, p.A15)(SFC, 9/23/11, p.C3)

1977 May 25, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(SC, 5/25/02)

1977 Sep 3, Lisa Marie Bonham
(6) of Martinez, Ca., was abducted from Idlewild Park in Reno. Her
body was found by hikers after 2 months. In 2000 Stephen Robert
Smith, a convicted sex offender, was charged with the murder
following a DNA match.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.A18)

1979 Jun 24, Brenda Lynn Judd
and Sandra Colley were kidnapped in Reno, Nevada, by Gerald Gallego
(b.1946) and Charlene Williams. The bodies of Judd (14) and Colley
(13) were found in Dec 1999 in Lassen Ct., Ca. Gallego died in 2002
at age 56.
(www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/gallego.htm)(SFC,10/28/97,
p.A17)(SFC, 12/4/99, p.A3)(SFC, 7/20/02, p.A15)

1979 Nov, The first annual
COMDEX trade show opened in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand. It was a
trade show for business related computer hardware and software. The
acronym used to stand for Computer Dealer Expo, but since 1984, the
D has stood for Distribution.
(Hem, Nov.'95,
p.138)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMDEX)

1979 The Nevada Supreme Court
ruled to uphold a May vote to move the Lander County seat to Battle
Mountain.
(ACC, 2004)

1979 Ralph Engelstad (d.2002 at
72) opened the Imperial Palace on the site of the old Flamingo
Capri.
(SFC, 11/28/02, p.A30)

1979-1983 Robert List served as governor of the
state.
(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.B18)

1980 Nov 21, In Las Vegas 87
people died in a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino.
(AP, 11/21/97)

1980-1990 The US Dept. of Defense allowed the open
pit burning of highly toxic classified materials at a top secret Air
Force base called Area 51, 125 northwest of Las Vegas. Workers later
complained of strange skin diseases and other health problems and
file suit against the DoD. Government lawyers use the "mosaic
theory" argument in defense and claim that they can't acknowledge
seemingly innocuous facts without creating a mosaic that an enemy
could use to figure out military secrets.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-1)

1981 May 30, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(http://tinyurl.com/32s5h3)

1981 The Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency put a moratorium on new housing around the Lake
Tahoe to maintain water quality.
(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A3)

1982 Jan 18, Four Thunderbird
USAF pilots died when their T-38 Talon jets crashed at Indian
Springs Auxiliary Airfield, Nv. Mechanical failure was cited as the
cause. Shortly after, the precision flying team began flying F-16
fighter jets. It was the worst accident in the Thunderbirds'
history. In all, 18 pilots and one crew member have died in
Thunderbird crashes.
(www.reviewjournal.com)(SFC, 8/30/03, p.A22)

1982 Oct 4, Frank Rosenthal
(1929-2008), Las Vegas casino operator, survived a car bomb when his
Cadillac exploded as he turned the key. He ran the mob-owned
Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda and Marina casinos. In 1995 Martin
Scorsese made his film “Casino," based on the life of Frank
Rosenthal.
(SFC, 10/17/08, p.B8)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.99)

1983 Mar 26, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/USA-ntests3.html)

1984 Jun, In Nevada Gerald
Gallego was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death.
Charlene Williams, his former accomplice and mother of his child,
testified against Gallego. They were involved in sex-slave murders
in the late 1970s. Charlene was released from prison in 1997.
(SFC,10/28/97, p.A17)(SFC, 1/21/02, p.B2)

1984 Art Bell began
broadcasting a late-night radio talk show from Pahrump. In 1998 it
was the 4th most listened to show in the US.
(WSJ, 12/3/98, p.W17)

1985 The 1st Cowboy Poetry
Gathering was held in Elko, Nevada. Baxter Black and Waddie Mitchell
were among the performing poets. It became an annual event held in
the last week of January.
(WSJ, 3/5/00, p.A1)(SSFC, 5/5/02, p.M2)

1985 Las Vegas began hosting
the National Finals Rodeo (NFR), which began around 1959.
(WSJ, 1/4/00, p.A20)

1986 The Hot August Nights
festival was begun in Reno to earn money for the Easter Seal
Society. It became an annual festival touted as the world’s largest
nostalgia fest.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T10)

1986 The bodies of Tony (48)
and Michael (41) Spilotro were found buried in an Indiana cornfield.
Tony “The Ant" Spilotro was a top mob figure in Las Vegas. In 2005
prosecutors indicted 11 Chicago mob figures for at least 18 murders,
including the Spilotros.
(SFC, 4/26/05, p.A5)

1987 Feb 1, Terry Williams of
Los Gatos, CA, won the largest slot machine payoff to that time. He
put $4.9 million in his pockets after getting four lucky "7s" on a
machine in Reno, NV.
(www.igt.com/Content/base.asp?pid=8.17.37.19)

1987 Mar 2, Two sets of
quintuplets were born on the same day in the USA as Rosalind Helms
delivered a basketball team of bouncing babies in Peoria, IL and
Robin Jenkins became the mother of five in Las Vegas, NV,- beating
the odds there, to be sure.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)

1987 Jul 15, Izzatullah Wasifi
(29) was arrested at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for selling 650
grams (23 ounces) of heroin. Prosecutors said the drugs were worth
$2 million on the street. Wasifi served three years and eight months
in prison before winning parole. In 2007 Wasifi, a long time friend
of Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai, was appointed as general-director of
Afghanistan’s General Independent Administration of Anti-Corruption
and Bribery.
(AP, 3/9/07)

1987 US Congress amended the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directed DOE to study only Yucca
Mountain, Nevada, located within a former nuclear test site.
(www.nei.org/keyissues/nuclearwastedisposal/yuccamountain/)
1987 Nevada opened a
maximum-security prison 10 miles from Ely.
(SFC, 8/21/02, p.A12)
1987 The Texas Bass family
bought an undeveloped property 17 miles from Las Vegas and began the
$500 million Lake Las Vegas development.
(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.B12)

1989 The Mormons dedicated a
new temple in Las Vegas.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A23)

1990 Apr 2, The University of
Nevada at Las Vegas won the NCAA college basketball championship,
defeating Duke 103-73.
(AP, 4/2/00)

1990 Pahrump, Nevada, had 7,600
residents. The town had no police, no income tax, 5 brothels and no
need for building permits. By 1998 it grew to 24,000.
(SFEC, 7/20/98, p.A3)

1990 Arthur Goldberg, head of
an East Coast trucking business, bought a 5.6% share of Bally
Entertainment and began a 10 year creation of the world’s largest
casino conglomerate.
(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A26)

1991 Sep 1, The Burning Man
Festival came to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada from Baker’s Beach
in San Francisco.
(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A15)

1991 Sep 21, Union members of
the Frontier Hotel-Casino went out on strike. The strike ended in
1998 under new owner, Phillip Ruffin.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A5)

1991 Sep, A scandal arose from
the US Navy Tailhook convention in Las Vegas. Navy officers were
accused of sexually assaulting female officers. The incident was
documented by Gregory Vistica in his book "Fall from Glory, the Men
Who Sank the US Navy." Paula Coughlin, a Navy lieutenant, pressed
the initial charges and more than 80 women made similar claims.
(WSJ, 7/10/96, p.A19)(WSJ, 10/14/96, p.A14)(SFC,
5/3/97, p.A6)

1992 Oct 28, The US
Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was enacted.
It banned betting on sports with exemptions to Delaware, Nevada,
Oregon and Montana.
(Econ, 9/26/09, p.42)(http://tinyurl.com/yenf89a)

1993 Jan 6, Authorities rescued
Jennifer Stolpa and infant son after her husband found help after an
eight-day ordeal in the snow-covered Nevada desert.
(AP, 1/6/98)

1993 Oct, Heather Catherine
Tallchief (21) drove away from the Circus Circus hotel casino in Las
Vegas in an armored car with $2.5 million. In 2005 she surrendered
and said she had been influenced by her boyfriend Roberto Solis, who
remained a fugitive. The 2 had fled to Amsterdam after the heist.
(SFC, 9/16/05, p.A3)

1993 The Roman Catholic Shrine
of the Most Holy Redeemer opened in Las Vegas with seating for
2,500.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A23)
1993 In Cactus Springs a small
shrine, dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, opened. It was
built be a female construction crew sponsored by Genevieve Vaughan
of Texas and cared for by Patricia Pearlman, a Crone Witch from New
Jersey.
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A3)(WSJ, 4/17/00, p.A1,6)
1993 Nevada rancher Cliven
Bundy quit paying grazing fees on government land after the
government designated the Gold Butte area as protected habitat for
the endangered desert tortoise and cut his allotment of cows. The
BLM cancelled his grazing permit and ordered him to remove his cows.
Federal judges later upheld the action.
(SSFC, 4/20/14, p.A11)

1994 In Cactus Springs, Nv., a
small shrine to the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet was built. It was cared
for by Patricia Pearlman, a Crone Witch from New Jersey.
(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A3)

c1994 Robert T. Bigelow donated
$3.7 million to the Univ. of Nevada, LV, to establish the Bigelow
Chair in Consciousness Studies. Bigelow established his fortune
building extended stay hotels and later set up Bigelow Aerospace for
a hotel in space circling the moon.
(WSJ, 8/23/99, p.A1,8)

1995 Jan, The charred body of
Ron Rudin (64), a millionaire real estate developer, was found in
the desert. His 5th wife, Margaret, was suspect but there was
insufficient evidence to arrest her.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A3)

1995 Dec 18, A powerful
fertilizer bomb was found outside an Internal Revenue Service office
in Reno, Nevada, but fizzled before its lit fuse could do much
damage.
(AP, 12/18/00)

1996 Jul, Bruce Weinstein, a
professional gambler, was killed in his bed. His decomposed body was
found a month later in the desert. His girlfriend, Amy DeChant, was
charged in the crime. She was found in Florida in 1998 hiding at the
Sunnier Days nudist camp.
(SFC, 2/2/98, p.A3,5)

1996 Sep 7, Rapper Tupac Shakur
was shot on the Las Vegas Strip; he died six days later.
(AP, 9/7/97)

1996 Sep 13, Rap star Tupac
Shakur (b.1971) died of gun shot wounds in Las Vegas after he was
wounded Sep 7 in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving a Mike Tyson
fight in Las Vegas. He had just finished filming "Gang Related"
later retitled "Criminal Intent." He was buried at Stone Mountain,
Georgia.
(SFC, 9/14/96, p.A1)(AP,
9/13/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur)

1996 Jack Lee Harelson was
convicted for stealing Native American artifacts from a cave in the
Nevada desert. In 2004 Harelson faced a trial in Oregon over charges
that he tried to hire a hit man to murder 4 people involved in his
conviction.
(Arch, 1/05, p.10)

1996 The Neon Museum was
established in Las Vegas.
(Sm, 3/06, p.26)

1997 Jan 3, Las Vegas had a
total of 101,106 hotel rooms as of this date.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, DB p.64)

1997 May 25, In Las Vegas
Jeremy Strohmeyer (20) raped and killed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson
in the Primadonna Casino. Strohmeyer’s friend, David Cash, saw the
initial struggle, but failed to stop it. Cash was later plagued by
fellow students in Berkeley for his non-action. Strohmeyer admitted
his guilt in 1998 in exchange for life in prison. He was sentenced
to life in prison in Oct, 1998.
(SFC, 8/26/98, p.A14)(SFC, 8/27/98, p.A17)(SFC,
9/9/98, p.A1)(SFC, 10/15/98, p.A3)

1997 Jul 26, Pres. Clinton
visited Lake Tahoe and announced that the Forest Service would allot
350 acres to the Washoe Indian tribe for a cultural center and give
tribal members access to the edge of Lake Tahoe. He also made an
executive order for $50 million over 2 years and 25 initiatives to
improve the water quality of Lake Tahoe. He brought with him $26
million worth of natural gas postal trucks and sewage pipes to help
preserve the lake.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, p.A1,14)(AP, 7/26/98)

1997 Aug 27, The annual Burning
Man Festival began near Gerlach, Nevada, on a private ranch on the
Hualapai Playa, a prehistoric lakebed. Some 20,000 people came to
the instantly created "Black Rock City" for the torching of the
50-foot effigy.
(SFEC, 8/24/97, p.A3)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A1, 15)

1997 Oct 13, A British jet car,
Thrust SSC, driven by Andy Green of the Royal Air Force set a land
speed record of 764.168 mph in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The
record was not recorded as official because turn around time went
over an hour due to braking problems. Green officially broke the
record two days later.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A1,7)(AP, 10/13/98)

1997 Oct 15, A British
jet-powered car driven by pilot Andy Green broke the land speed
record with an average run of 763.035 mph at Gerlach, Nevada. The
Thrust SSC was powered by two 110,000-horse-power Rolls-Royce Spey
205 engines. The vehicle was 54 feet long, 12 feet wide, and weighed
10.2 tons.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A3)(AP, 10/15/98)

1997 Oct, In Nevada a US
district court convicted Jose B. Uribe for attempting to swap world
famous paintings for 110 pounds of cocaine. At least some of the
paintings, that included work by Matisse, Renoir and Dali, were said
to be owned by entertainer Wayne Newton. Newton, embroiled in a
bankruptcy suit, initially denied ownership but later changed his
mind and claimed ownership.
(SFC,11/17/97, p.A2)

1997 Dec 28, The Nevada Club
owned by the Fitzgerald Gaming Corp. in Reno closed down after being
sold to a private party. Everything inside was auctioned including
200 old mechanical slot machines that sold for $600 when new.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, p.D3)

1997 Louise Driggs, a
descendant of John Piper, sold the Piper Opera House of Virginia
City to the nonprofit Piper's Opera House Historic Programs.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)

1997 The streets of Reno
flooded as the Truckee River overflowed.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.C7)

1998 Feb 19, Federal officials
in Henderson, Nevada, arrested Larry Wayne Harris and William Job
Leavitt for possession of suspected anthrax bacterium. Harris had
earlier published the 131-page book: "Bacteriological Warfare: A
Major Threat to North America." The substance turned out to be a
harmless veterinary vaccine. Harris was later sentenced to 6 months
probation.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A1,8)(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.A11)(SFC,
3/25/98, p.A3)

1998 Aug 8, A riot broke out in
Reno during the annual "Hot Autumn Nights" festival. There was some
property damage and a few minor injuries. 130 people were arrested.
(SFC, 8/10/98, p.A2)

1998 Sep 4, In Nevada two Air
Force helicopters crashed during training and all 12 people aboard
were killed.
(SFC, 9/5/98, p.A3)

1998 Sep 6, In Gerlach, Nevada,
15,000 people gathered at Black Rock City to watch the 13th Burning
Man go up in flames and end the 8 day arts festival.
(SFC, 9/7/98, p.A1)

1998 Sep, Lonnie "Ted" Binion
(55), son of Benny Binion, died from a suspected drug overdose. 6
months later the coroner declared that his death was a homicide.
Sandy Murphy (26), Binion's girl friend and her lover, Rick Tabish,
were considered prime suspects. 36 hours after Binion's death police
arrested Tabish digging up Binion's buried vault in Pahrump that
contained $4 million in silver bars and was built by Tabish. Murphy
and Tabish were arrested in 1999 and convicted of 1st degree murder
in 2000.
(SFC, 5/24/99, p.A3)(SFC, 6/26/99, p.A4)(SFC,
5/20/00, p.A3)

1998 Oct 18, The new Steve Wynn
$1.6 billion, 3,000 room Bellagio Casino opened in Las Vegas. It was
built over the site of the old Dunes casino. It was named after the
Italian town of Bellagio whose name means place of relaxation.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.A1)(SFEM, 11/29/98, p.13)

1998 Oct 19, Mike Tyson got his
boxing license back after pleading with the Nevada Athletic
Commission not to "torture" him anymore for biting Evander
Holyfield's ears in the ring 15 months earlier.
(AP, 10/19/08)

1998 Nov, Voters approved the
medical use of marijuana with a 59% margin.
(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.A20)

1998 Dec 29, In Nevada 31 wild
horses were found shot to death by rifle fire at close range at
Devil's Flat near Washoe Valley.
(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A3)

1998 The Nevada nuclear dump
site at Yucca Mountain was originally scheduled to open this year.
In 2006 the US Dept. of Energy announced that it would not open
until 2017.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.A1)

1999 Jan 4, A sniper hit at
least 4 vehicles on I-80 between Reno and the California border.
Police arrested Christopher Lee Merritt (20) of Mankato, Minn., who
hoped to rob the drivers after they crashed. Merritt pleaded guilty
in 1999 and was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison in 2000.
(SFC, 1/5/99, p.A3)(SFC, 1/6/99, p.A2)(SFC,
11/6/99, p.A6)(SFC, 1/12/00, p.A7)

1999 Jan 12, A Reno
construction worker, Anthony John Merlino (21) was arrested for the
slaughter of 34 wild horses. Two marines were also charged, William
Brendle (22) and Darien Thomas (21).
(SFC, 1/13/99, p.A3)

1999 Aug 9, The US government
took over the Mustang Ranch brothel following successful fraud and
racketeering charges.
(SFC, 8/10/99, p.A3)

1999 Sep 3, An estimated 18,000
people were in attendance at Black Rock Desert for the Burning Man
festival. Local veterans complained that spontaneous art projects
started giving way to carefully laid plans and agendas.
(SFC, 9/4/99, p.B1)(SSFC, 1/2/05, p.A20)

1999 Sep 1, The $760 million
Paris-Las Vegas Hotel Casino, owned by Park Place Entertainment,
held its grand opening. Arthur Goldberg (d.2000 at 58) delivered the
hotel on time and on budget at $785 million.
(SFEC, 10/24/99, p.T10)(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A26)

1999 Nov 22, Raymond Edward
Wong called Pinole, Ca., police to report that Alice Sin (21) of
Pinole, Ca., had not come home. Sin’s decomposed and bullet-riddled
body was found Jan 25, 2000, in Churchill County, Nevada. In 2011
police in Pinole, citing new evidence, arrested Raymond Wong, the
father of her child. Wong’s 2nd girlfriend, Jessica Tang, later
testified that all three had driven into the desert and she and Wong
shot and killed Alice Sin, who was reportedly pregnant at the time.
(SFC, 1/28/00, p.A1)(SFC, 12/31/11, p.C2)(SFC,
1/4/13, p.A1)

2000 Jan 30, The Mapes Hotel
and Casino, listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's
as one of the most endangered landmarks, was blown up at 8 a.m. as
10,000 people watched.
(SFC, 1/18/00, p.A1)(SFC, 1/31/00, p.A1)

2000 Mar 19, Krystal Steadman
(5) disappeared from a playground at Stateline. Her body was found
the next day off US 50 and Thomas Robert Soria (19) was arrested.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A5)

2000 Mar 30, In Reno there was
an arson fire at a construction site. By the end of May a serial
arsonist was suspected in setting 12 fires with damages over $2
billion.
(SFC, 5/31/00, p.A6)

2000 Jun, Jose Manuel Vigoa
Perez robbed the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, continued a string of
robberies that began in 1998. He was soon caught and imprisoned. In
2008 John Huddy authored “Storming Las Vegas: How a Cuban-Born,
Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down the Strip to the Tune of Five
World-Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and Millions of Dollars."
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.W7)

2000 Jul 4, In Jarbridge the
Jarbridge Shovel Brigade reopened access to South Canyon Road, which
had been closed by the US Forest Service to protect endangered bull
trout in the Jarbridge River.
(SFC, 7/5/00, p.A1)

2000 Dec, Harper's magazine ran
an article by Jim McManus, a "rank amateur," who had made a
successful run in the 2000 World Series of Poker. In 2003 the
article was expanded into the book "Positively Fifth Street:
Murderers, Cheetahs and Binion's World Series of Poker.
(SSFC, 5/4/03, p.M1)

2000 Gregory Martin authored
"Mountain City," a personal look at the northern Nevada mining town.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, BR p.8)
2000 Switch began building a
series of colocation centers in Las Vegas. Its business got a boost
in December 2002, when it acquired a former Enron broadband services
facility out of bankruptcy. In 2010 the SWITCH SuperNAP, a huge data
center, opened near the Las Vegas airport.
(Econ, 1/7/12, p.28)(http://tinyurl.com/7r3deaq)

2001 April 5, Michelle Curran
(16) was reported missing in Las Vegas. She was kidnapped as she
hitchhiked, sexually abused for three weeks, and then shot in the
head. In 2006 Michael Thorton (50) and Janeen Snyder (26) were both
found guilty of murder, rape with a foreign object, and burglary.
The pair were sentenced to death.
(http://tinyurl.com/fww93)(SFC, 9/9/06, p.B2)

2001 Apr 14, It was reported
that 8 cases of childhood leukemia were recorded in 2000 in the area
of Fallon, Nevada. 12 children were diagnosed with leukemia since
1997 and high levels of arsenic in the drinking water was suspected.
Jet fuel at a nearby air base and a nuclear detonation in 1963, and
pesticides were also cited as possible causes. In 2002 a 16th case
was reported.
(SFC, 4/14/01, p.A6)(SFC, 7/29/02, p.A4)

2001 Apr 21, Stephanus Bridges
(37), a South African national, was executed for the shooting Hunter
Blatchford and leaving him to bleed to death in the desert outside
Las Vegas. Bridges denied the killing.
(SFC, 4/23/01, p.A7)

2001 Jul 28, Martin Stern Jr.,
architect of much of the Las Vegas skyline, died at age 84.
(SFC, 8/2/01, p.C2)

2001 Aug 17, Adam Ezerski (19),
wanted for 2 recent murders in Florida, was arrested at the Holiday
Inn in Reno as the city kicked off its gay pride celebration.
(SFC, 8/18/01, p.A1)

2001 Aug 27, In Gerlach,
Nevada, thousands of people gathered at Black Rock City for the 16th
Burning Man arts festival. This year’s theme was the Seven Ages,
from the cradle to the mausoleum
(SFC, 9/1/01, p.A1,9)

2001 Sep 2, The Burning Man
festival came to a close. Also burned was "The Mausoleum," a plywood
temple built over several weeks and dedicated to the dead.
(SSFC, 9/9/01, p.B3)

2001 Sep 22, Volunteers
celebrated the completion of the Tahoe Rim Trail, a 150-mile loop
around Lake Tahoe that began with an idea by US Forest Service
ranger Glenn Hampton in 1980.
(SFC, 9/29/01, p.A13)(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.C5)

2001 Oct 15, Anthrax in a
letter to a Reno Microsoft office was reported to be from Malaysia.
2 anthrax-tainted letters were reported to have been mailed from
Trenton, New Jersey and 2 postal employees there showed symptoms.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.A1)

2001 Dwayne Jackson was
arrested on kidnapping and robbery charges in Nevada. He spent 4
years in prison until his release in 2006. In November, 2010, an
error regarding DNA evidence indicated that the wrong man had been
sent to prison.
(SFC, 7/8/11, p.A6)

2002 Jan 10, US Energy Sec.
Spencer Abraham said he found the Nevada site at Yucca Mountain
"scientifically sound and suitable" as a nuclear waste repository.
(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/11/02, p.A1)

2002 Apr 23, The US Supreme
Court ruled that property owners were not entitled to compensation
in cases where a temporary freeze stops development. The ruling
stemmed from a development freeze around Lake Tahoe.
(SFC, 4/24/02, p.A1)

2002 Apr 27, In Laughlin, Nev.,
members of the Hells Angels clashed with members of the Mongol gang
and 3 people were killed in a shootout at Harrah’s. Some 80,000
bikers were in town for the annual Laughlin River Run party.
Investigations led to arrests on Dec 3, 2003.
(SSFC, 4/28/02, p.A9)(SFC, 12/5/03, p.A25)

2002 May 7, Lucas John Helder
(21) of Pine Island, Minn., was arrested following a car chase near
Lovelock, Nevada, and charged for the recent series of mailbox pipe
bombs. Helder said he was trying to make a "smiley face" pattern on
the map of his bombings. His series of rural mailbox bombings left
six people wounded in Illinois and Iowa. Helder has since been found
incompetent to stand trial.
(SFC, 5/8/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A3)(AP,
5/7/07)

2002 May 13, A crash on I-80
east of Reno left 5 members of a Utah family dead. Stephen Scharosch
later admitted he was drunk and under the influence of marijuana. In
2003 Scharosch (52) was sentenced to up to 80 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/18/03, p.A15)

2002 Aug 31, The Burning Man
was put to flames at Black Rock, Nv. Some 29,000 people attended the
event, which featured a 78-foot Temple of Joy, created by David
Best, that was burned down Sep 1.
(SFC, 8/31/02, p.A3)(SFC, 9/2/02, p.A1)

2002 Aug, In Gerlach, Nevada,
the 17th Burning Man arts festival was scheduled. Founder Larry
Harvey summarized the event as an example of a gift economy, where
"value is transmitted through people, from heart to heart."
(SSFC, 7/21/02, p.E6)

2002 Oct 5, In Nevada the
partially clad body of Jay R. Smith (87), a former star in “The
Little Rascals," was found wrapped in a sheet near Interstate 15.
Charles Wayne Crombie (d.2014), a homeless man befriended by Smith,
was later convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 20 years
to life.
(AP, 7/18/14)

2002 Dec 1, The US federal
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began rounding up over 2,650 wild
horses in Nevada to prevent starving and rangeland destruction.
(SFC, 11/29/02, p.J7)

2003 Mar 21, A young man from
LA visiting Las Vegas hit pay dirt, a world record $39 million on a
slot machine.
(AP, 3/22/03)

2003 Mar 25, Celine Dion opened
a three-year gig in the new $95 million Colosseum theater at Caesars
Palace.
(AP, 3/26/03)

2003 May 24, The $16 million
Nevada Museum of Art opened in Reno.
(SFC, 5/27/03, p.D2)
2003 May 24, In Las Vegas Chris
Moneymaker (27), an accountant, walked away with $2.5 million and
the title of champion in the 34th annual World Series of Poker.
(AP, 5/25/03)

2003 Jun 22, It was reported
that Elko, Nevada, besieged by Mormon crickets (shield-backed
katydids), had spent $56,000 for 18 tons of the pesticide carbaryl
to stop the infestation. The 4-year Nevada plague, the worst in 5
decades, had missed Elko until this year.
(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.A1)

2003 Aug 30, In Gerlach,
Nevada, a woman riding an "art car" at the counterculture Burning
Man festival died when she accidentally fell under the vehicle's
wheels. The weeklong festival, theme name "Beyond Belief," peaked
Saturday night with the torching of a 70-foot-high wooden effigy of
a man.
(AP, 8/31/03)(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A1)

2003 Aug 31, In Gerlach,
Nevada, the "Temple of Honor" by David Best went up in flames. Some
30,500 people attended the weeklong "Burning Man" event.
(SFC, 9/1/03, p.A1)

2003 Dec 25, A small plane
crashed after takeoff at the North Las Vegas and 6 family members
were killed.
(SSFC, 12/28/03, p.A3)

2003 The US Bureau of Land
Management auctioned off the assets of Mustang Ranch on eBay. Lance
Gilman paid $145,000 for the brothel’s trademark and pink stucco
building, which he airlifted to his Wild Horse bordello in Storey
County, Nevada.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.33)

2004 Jan 13, Harrah's agreed to
buy Binion's Horseshoe casino. It had just been shut down by federal
agents for failure to pay pension and health benefits to its
employees.
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.B3)

2005 Feb 21, The new Atomic
Testing Museum opened in Las Vegas.
(www.ntshf.org/)

2005 Mar 9, In Las Vegas 2
retired NYC police detectives, Louis Eppolito (56) and Stephen
Caracappa (63), were arrested on federal charges of taking part in 8
murders on behalf of the Mafia. In 2009 both men were sentenced to
life in prison.
(SFC, 3/11/05, p.A3)(SFC, 3/7/09, p.A5)

2005 Apr 21, Anna Ayala, the
woman who claimed she found a finger in her bowl of Wendy's chili
last month in San Jose, Ca., was arrested at her home in Las Vegas.
(AP, 4/22/05)(SFC, 4/22/05, p.A1)

2005 Apr 26, The 160-acre 1870
ghost town of Palisade, Nevada, was auctioned off in SF for
$150,000.
(SFC, 4/27/05, p.A2)

2005 Apr 28, Steve Wynn opened
the new $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas casino-resort. It was built on
the site of the historic Desert Inn.
(SFC, 4/29/05, p.A3)(WSJ, 5/17/05, p.D10)

2005 May 23, Kansas City rapper
Anthony “Fat Tone" Watkins (24) and another man were found shot dead
in the Southern Highlands area of Las Vegas. Police later said that
a SF rap promoter named Andre Dow, aka “Mac Minister," and Jason
Mathis killed the 2 men to avenge the Nov, 2004, killing of Andre
“Mac Dre" Hicks in Kansas. Mathis was arrested in 2005 in SF. Dow
was arrested in 2006 in SF.
(SFC, 5/26/05, p.B5)(SFC, 11/29/05, p.A1)(SFC,
3/3/06, p.B7)

2005 Oct 8, In Nevada 23
robotic vehicles competed over a 150-mile course for a $2 million
prize sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
Darpa. 4 robotic vehicles finished the race across the Mojave desert
over a rugged 132-mile course without a single human command.
Stanford University's Sebastian Thrun, a customized Volkswagen,
crossed first in 6 hours and 59 minutes. Race officials planned to
resume the race Oct 9 so the sole remaining vehicle, a mammoth
six-wheel truck, could compete in daylight.
(SFC, 10/8/05, p.C1)(AP, 10/9/05)(Econ, 10/15/05,
p.88)

2005 Oct 9, A driverless
Volkswagen won a $2 million race across the rugged Nevada desert,
beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a
Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans
[see Oct 8].
(AP, 10/9/06)

2005 Nov, The US Bureau of Land
Management auctioned 3,000 acres of Nevada land in the Las Vega area
for $800 million.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.37)

2006 Jan 21, In Las Vegas Manny
Pacquiao avenged his defeat 10 months ago and handed Erik Morales
the worst beating of his career before finally stopping him in the
10th round of their 130-pound showdown.
(AP, 1/22/06)
2006 Jan 21, In Las Vegas
Jennifer Berry, a 22-year-old ballerina from Oklahoma, was crowned
Miss America. The pageant went without coverage from a major
television network for the first time since 1954, but aired on
Country Music Television.
(AP, 1/22/06)

2006 May 5, A spokesman for
Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn said Nevadans will be able to buy
prescription drugs from Canada over the Internet starting next week,
despite objections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
(AP, 5/5/06)

2006 Jun 12, Charla Mack was
slashed to death in Reno, Nevada. Judge Chuck Weller (53) was shot
and wounded the same day by a sniper. Police issued a murder warrant
for Charla’s husband, David Mack (45), the next day and declared him
a suspect in the shooting of Weller. Mack surrendered to Mexican
police on June 23. In 2008 Mack was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/16/06, p.B6)(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.A1)(SFC,
2/9/08, p.A4)

2006 Jul 11, Kathy Augustine
(50), Nevada state controller, died suddenly. Her husband, Chaz
Higgs, said it was a heart attack and chalked it up to the stress of
an uphill election battle for state treasurer. But just days after
her death, Higgs tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. On
Sep 29 Police arrested Higgs in Hampton, Va., after toxicology tests
found a drug in his wife’s system that would have paralyzed her.
Higgs was convicted on June 29, 2007, of killing Augustine by
injecting her with succinylcholine, a paralyzing drug. He was
sentenced to life with a possibility of parole after serving 20
years.
(AP, 7/21/06)(SFC, 9/30/06,
p.A3)(www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6762551)

2006 Jul 22, Some 3,000 people
gathered at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual
Lifestyles conference, a five-day, $700-per-couple event that offers
a mix of seminars, socializing and sex.
(Reuters, 7/22/06)

2006 Aug 11, Jamie Gold (36), a
former Hollywood talent agent, won the $12 million grand prize in
the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nv.
(SFC, 8/12/06, p.A2)

2006 Aug 29, Warren Steed Jeffs
(50), a fugitive polygamist, was arrested in Nevada. He was on the
FBI’s 10 most-wanted list for sex crimes in Utah and Arizona.
(SFC, 8/30/06, p.A11)

2006 Aug 31, The United States
carried out a subcritical nuclear experiment successfully at an
underground test site in Nevada, the 2nd this year and the 23rd such
test since 1997.
(http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/100778)

2006 Nov 4, Katherine Jefferts
Schori (52) took office at Washington National Cathedral as the 1st
woman to lead the US Episcopal Church and the 1st female to head an
Anglican province. The former bishop of Nevada was elected at the
Episcopal convention in June.
(SSFC, 11/5/06, p.A9)

2006 Nov 14, US Sen. Harry
Reid, a moderate Nevada Democrat, was elected by colleagues as US
Senate majority leader for the 110th Congress that will convene in
January.
(AP, 11/14/06)

2006 Dec 4, Station Casinos of
Las Vegas said it received a $4.7 billion buyout offer from its
founding family and affiliate of Colony Capital LLC, a private
equity firm.
(SFC, 12/5/06, p.C3)

2006 Dec 21, The US Census
Bureau said Arizona had deposed Nevada as the fastest growing US
state.
(WSJ, 12/22/06, p.A1)

2007 Jan 2, Jim Gibbons, former
Republican Representative in Congress, was sworn in as governor of
Nevada. He soon faced FBI investigations over unreported gifts while
serving on the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees.
(WSJ, 2/15/07, p.A1)

2007 Apr 21, Police in Las
Vegas raided illegal brothels as part of “Operation Dollhouse," a
sting aimed at prostitution and human trafficking with suspected
links to Asia. Prostitution is legal in most counties of Nevada, but
not in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
(SFC, 4/25/07, p.B5)

2007 May 5, In Las Vegas Floyd
Mayweather Jr. won his boxing match against Oscar De La Hoya in a
12-round split decision. A sellout crowd of 16,200 paid a record $19
million gate.
(AP, 5/6/07)

2007 Jun 27, Nevada Solar One,
the first large CSP (concentrating solar power) plant built since
the 1980s, went online with a capacity to generate 64 megawatts.
(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.42)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_One)

2007 Jul 6, In Las Vegas Steven
Zegrean (51) opened fire on gamblers at the New York-New York casino
and wounded 4 people before he was tackled by off-duty military
reservists. On Oct 19, 2009, Zegrean was sentenced to 26-90 years in
prison.
(SFC, 7/7/07, p.A5)(SFC, 10/20/09, p.A5)

2007 Jul 7, Wildfires in
California consumed 17,000 acres in Inyo National Forest and 7,500
acres in Los Padres National Forest. An 8,000-acre wildfire
forced hundreds of people in the town of Winnemucca to leave their
homes, one of more than a dozen blazes that charred a combined 55
square miles in northern Nevada. In Utah a 160,000-acre wildfire
forced evacuations at Cove Fort and the Blundell Geothermal Power
Plant. Wildfires also burned in Colorado, Arizona, Oregon and
Washington states.
(AP, 7/8/07)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.A5)

2007 Aug 21, The board of MGM
Mirage approved a deal with Dubai World in which the holding company
for the Persian Gulf state will eventually acquire a 9.5%
stake and 50% ownership in the Las Vegas CityCenter project.
(WSJ, 8/22/07, p.A3)

2007 Aug 28, Burning Man became
Burnt Man four days early, and a San Francisco performance artist
was arrested on suspicion of igniting the signature figure of the
counterculture festival in the remote Nevada desert.
(AP, 8/28/07)

2007 Sep 3, Steve Fossett
(b.1944), tycoon turned record seeker, disappeared in Nevada after
flying from the Flying M Ranch, owned by billionaire Baron Hilton.
In 2002 Fosset became the 1st person to fly around the world in a
balloon. In 2006 Fossett authored his autobiography “Chasing the
Wind." A search was formally suspended on Oct 2. On Feb 15, 2008, an
Illinois court declared him legally dead. In 2008 wreckage of his
plane was found on Oct 1 in the rugged eastern mountains of
California.
(SFC, 9/5/07, p.A8)(SFC, 9/15/07, p.A1)(SFC,
2/16/08, p.B5)(Econ, 2/23/08, p.106)(Reuters, 10/2/08)

2007 Sep 8, In Nevada Darrin
Tuck (26) handed in a videotape to Nevada authorities. The graphic
video depicted a 2003 sexual assault on a 2-year-old girl. Chester
Arthur Stiles was tracked down following a nationwide manhunt. In
2009 Stiles was sentenced to 21 terms of life in prison.
(SFC, 5/30/09,
p.A4)(www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=49286)

2007 Sep 11, Douglas Eugene
"Gene" Savoy, explorer, died at age 80 in Reno, Nev. He discovered
more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing
adventures to learn more about ancient cultures. Savoy wrote dozens
of books, including "Antisuyo: The Search for the Lost Cities of the
Amazon" (1970) about his early discoveries in Peru, and "On the
Trail of the Feathered Serpent" (1974) about some of his sea
journeys.
(AP, 9/16/07)

2007 Sep 14, Two airplanes
collided at the Reno National Championship Air Races, killing one
pilot and injuring another in the third fatal crash at the event in
four days.
(AP, 9/15/07)

2007 Sep 16, Police in Las
Vegas arrested O.J. Simpson saying he was part of an armed group
that broke into a hotel room on Sep 13 and snatched memorabilia that
documented his sports career. Simpson (60) was booked on five felony
counts, including suspicion of assault and robbery with a deadly
weapon. On Sep 18 DA David Roger filed the felony charges and
added five other felonies, including kidnapping and conspiracy to
commit kidnapping.
(SFC, 9/17/07, p.A1)(AP, 9/18/07)

2007 Nov 13, In Las Vegas the
New Frontier casino, opened in 1942, was imploded to make way for a
$5 billion megaresort. It earned historical notations by becoming
the Strip's first theme casino and hosting Elvis Presley's debut in
the city. Phil Ruffin sold the 34.5-acre site to Elad, owned by
Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, for $1.24 billion in May. Ruffin
had bought the Frontier in 1997 for $165 million and quickly settled
a nearly 6 1/2-year strike by 550 hotel workers, one of the longest
job actions in US history.
(AP, 11/13/07)

2007 Nov 15, During a feisty
Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Hillary Rodham Clinton accused her
closest rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, of slinging mud
"right out of the Republican playbook" and sharply criticized their
records.
(AP, 11/15/08)

2007 Nov 28, O.J. Simpson
pleaded not guilty in Las Vegas to charges of kidnapping and armed
robbery stemming from a confrontation with sports memorabilia
dealers. Simpson and a co-defendant were convicted in October, 2008.
(AP, 11/28/08)

2007 Dec 7, US federal
officials outlined a new plan on how to allocate water to
California, Arizona and Nevada from the Colorado River in case of
shortages.
(SFC, 12/10/07, p.A9)

2008 Jan 5, A levee break
flooded hundreds of homes In Nevada as a storm that has pummeled the
West Coast with high wind and heavy rain dropped a thick blanket of
snow on the Sierra Nevada.
(AP, 1/5/08)

2008 Jan 20, Brianna Denison
(19) last was seen at the edge of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Her body was found Feb 15, 8 miles away near a business park and an
autopsy confirmed that she died of strangulation. DNA evidence
linked her kidnapping to two other attacks on women near the
university late last year.
(AP, 2/17/08)

2008 Feb 28, In Las Vegas two
vials of ricin were found a manager at the Extended Stay America
motel. 2 days earlier police had found firearms and an “anarchist
type textbook" there. Roger Von Bergendorff (57) was the last to
stay in the room, and has been in critical condition since calling
an ambulance on Feb. 14 complaining of respiratory distress. In
April Bergendorff was indicted on federal charges that included
possession of a biological toxin. Bergendorff was convicted and
sentenced in November to 3½ years in federal prison.
(AP, 3/1/08)(SFC, 3/3/08, p.A4)(SFC, 4/23/08,
p.A3)(SFC, 11/18/08, p.A8)

2008 Mar 6, In Nevada letters
began arriving this week to patients who received injected
anesthesia at the endoscopy center from March 2004 to mid-January
were urged to get tested for hepatitis B and C, and HIV. The Las
Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of
medication for nearly four years.
(AP, 3/6/08)

2008 May 28, In Reno, Nevada,
30 monkeys were found essentially cooked alive after a repair
technician left a heater on at a lab owned by Charles River
Laboratories. Two other monkeys had to be euthanized. The company
was fined $14,000.
(SFC, 3/18/10, p.A7)(http://tinyurl.com/yab2maj)

2008 Jun 6, Pres. Bush signed a
transportation bill that freed $45 million for environmental studies
for a levitating train planned to run from Disneyland to Las
Vegas.
(SFC, 6/7/08, p.C2)

2008 Jul 25, US regulators took
over two banks and sold them to Mutual of Omaha Bank, the sixth and
seventh bank failures this year as financial institutions struggle
with a housing bust and credit crunch. The Office of the Comptroller
of the Currency said it closed First National Bank of Nevada and
First Heritage Bank NA of California.
(Reuters, 7/26/08)

2008 Aug 22, In North Las
Vegas, Nevada, an experimental aircraft crashed into a house killing
the pilot of the Velocity 173 RG and 2 people in the home.
(SFC, 8/23/08, p.A4)

2008 Aug 30, In Black Rock
City, Nevada, the 40-foot Burning Man was set aflame. This year’s
festival, themed the American Dream, was marked by a 10-story steel
frame tower built by union workers of recycled materials. The annual
guidebook reached 77 pages.
(SSFC, 8/31/08, p.B2)

2008 Sep 1, In Nevada an air
tanker being used to drop retardant on a wildfire in the Sierra
Nevada crashed after taking off for its last flight of the day,
killing all three crew members.
(AP, 9/2/08)

2008 Sep 5, US bank regulators
shut down Silver State Bank, saying the Nevada bank failed because
of losses on soured loans, mainly in commercial real estate and land
development. It was the 11th failure this year of a federally
insured bank.
(AP, 9/6/08)

2008 Oct 3, O.J. Simpson was
found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint
in a Las Vegas hotel room on Sep 13, 2007. This was 13 years to the
day after being acquitted of killing his wife and her friend in Los
Angeles. Four other men charged in the case struck plea bargains
that saved them from potential prison sentences in return for their
testimony.
(AP, 10/4/08)

2008 Dec 5, O.J. Simpson was
sentenced in Las Vegas from 9 to 33 years in prison for kidnapping
and assaulting two sports memorabilia dealers with a deadly weapon.
(AP, 12/6/08)

2008 Dec 9, Nevada state and
federal authorities said they arrested nearly two dozen people, many
with ties to Eastern Europe, in a credit card fraud and identity
theft scheme that cost Las Vegas businesses and consumers about $1.5
million.
(AP, 12/9/08)

2008 Dec 27, In northern Nevada
a 13 rail cars containing grain were involved in a derailment along
the Humboldt River. The derailment triggered the collapse of a
102-year-old bridge spanning the river.
(SSFC, 12/28/08, p.B2)

2009 Apr 17, Great Basin Bank
of Elko, Nevada, became the 25th US bank to fail this year.
(Econ, 4/25/09,
p.79)(www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/greatbasin.html)

2009 May 1, Danny Gans (52),
one of the most popular entertainers on the Las Vegas Strip for the
last decade, died in his sleep at his home in Henderson, Nev. A
coroner later said Gans' death was accidental, caused by a
prescription painkiller.
(AP, 5/2/09)(AP, 6/9/09)

2009 May 13, RealtyTrac Inc.
said new data indicated that the number of US households faced with
losing their homes to foreclosure jumped 32 percent in April
compared with the same month last year, with Nevada, Florida and
California showing the highest rates.
(AP, 5/13/09)

2009 May, Dr. Conrad Murray
(56), a Las Vegas cardiologist, signed on as Michael Jackson's
personal physician at $150,000 a month. He was in dire financial
shape at the time and owed a total of at least $780,000 in judgments
against him and his medical practice, outstanding mortgage payments
on his house, delinquent student loans, child support and credit
cards.
(AP, 8/1/09)

2009 Aug 14, Real estate lender
Colonial BancGroup Inc. was shut down by federal officials in the
biggest US bank failure this year. The FDIC, which was appointed
receiver of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial and its about $25
billion in assets, said the failed bank's 346 branches in Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Texas will reopen at the normal times
starting on Aug 15 as offices of Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T.
Regulators also closed four other banks: Community Bank of Arizona,
based in Phoenix; Union Bank, based in Gilbert, Ariz.; Community
Bank of Nevada, based in Las Vegas; and Dwelling House Savings and
Loan Association, located in Pittsburgh. The closures boosted to 77
the number of federally insured banks that have failed in 2009.
(AP, 8/15/09)

2009 Sep 30, In Nevada Karamjit
Kaur (16), a high school sophomore, disappeared in Reno. Police
suspected foul play. She was found with her brother-in-law on Oct 5
at a hotel in Merrillville, Ind.
(SSFC, 10/4/09, p.A10)(SFC, 10/5/09, p.A5)

2009 Nov 19, In Las Vegas Manny
Pacquiao of the Philippines demolished Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto to
become the only man in history to win seven titles in as many weight
classes.
(AFP, 11/20/09)

2009 Dec 16, In Las Vegas,
Nevada, the 76-acre CityCenter opened at a cost of around $8.5
billion. It was the largest privately funded construction project in
America.
(Econ, 7/10/10, SR
p.5)(http://tinyurl.com/y8f6659)

2009 Dec 28, In northern Nevada
federal officials began a 2-month roundup of some 2,500 wild horses
due to overpopulation. Federal managers on Feb 5 said the roundup
was completed with 1,922 mustangs removed from the Calico Mountains
Complex. 86 horses died in the government roundup, mostly from
stress and trauma.
(SFC, 12/29/09, p.A8)(SFC, 2/6/10, p.A6)(SFC,
4/20/10, p.A6)

2009 Nevada, with a population
of about 2.6 million, touted its limited reporting and disclosure
requirements for corporations incorporated there. Over 400,000
companies were registered in the state with some 80,000 new firms
added per year.
(Econ, 3/28/09, p.87)

2010 Jan 4, In Nevada Las Vegas
Johnny Lee Wicks (66), disgruntled over cuts in his Social Security
benefits, opened fire in the lobby of the federal court house in Las
Vegas killing a court security officer and wounding a deputy. Police
officers returned fire and Wicks was killed as he fled across the
street.
(SFC, 1/5/10, p.A6)

2010 Jan 9, A company called
TrueCompanion premiered the "lifelike" sex robot, Roxxxy on the
floor of the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.
(http://tinyurl.com/yb7w8gr)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.65)

2010 Jan 30, In Las Vegas
Caressa Cameron (22) of Virginia became the nation's newest Miss
America, emerging from a field of 53 contestants picked for their
beauty, compassion and interview savvy. Cameron, the first black
Miss America since Ericka Dunlap in 2005, said she wants to get a
master's degree and eventually become a news anchor.
(AP, 1/31/10)

2010 Mar 31, The CalNeva casino
on the north shore of Lake Tahoe closed due to declining gambling
revenues.
(SFC, 4/1/10, p.C5)

2010 May 16, Rima Fakih
(b.1986), a Lebanese-born immigrant and crowned as Miss Michigan,
became the first Arab-American woman to win the Miss USA pageant at
the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rima_Fakih)

2010 May 28, US Regulators shut
down three banks in Florida and one each in Nevada and California,
bringing the number of US bank failures this year to 78.
(AP, 5/29/10)

2010 Aug 23, In Las Vegas
Mexico's Jimena Navarrete (22) was crowned Miss Universe in an upset
victory that stunned a pageant world which had predicted a winner to
emerge from Ireland, Venezuela or the United States.
(AFP, 8/24/10)

2010 Oct 8, The remains of
Lexis Roberts (12) from Nevada were found in Louisiana. A warrant
was later issued for Thomas Steven Sanders (53). In 1994 family
members had declared Sanders dead, seven years after he vanished. In
November the remains of a woman, believed to be her mother, Suellen
Roberts (31) were found in Arizona.
(http://tinyurl.com/2dwr8pa)(SFC, 11/5/10,
p.A8)(SFC, 11/16/10, p.A18)

2010 Oct 9, It was reported
that Madeleine Pickens, the wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens,
has acquired a Nevada ranch for use as a wild horse sanctuary, the
Mustang Monument Preserve. The 14,000 acre property included grazing
rights to 540,000 acres of public land. She was also said to be
negotiating for and adjoining 4,000-acre ranch with grazing rights
to 24,000 acres. She hoped to return all 34,000 in government funded
holding facilities and pastures to their natural habitat.
(SFC, 10/9/10, p.A7)

2010 Oct 14, On the Arizona and
Nevada border a soaring bypass bridge high above the Colorado River
near Hoover Dam was dedicated after nearly eight years and $240
million worth of work. The bridge, which officially opens next week,
is named for former Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan and Pat Tillman.
(AP, 10/14/10)

2010 Nov 3, A federal judge in
Reno ordered 6 months of prison time for 2 men who admitted to
shooting wild horses while drinking and leaving them to die.
(SFC, 11/4/10, p.A9)
2010 Nov 3, In Colorado Richard
Paul (34) was arrested and federal agents seized five pounds of C-4
military explosives from his home in Durango. In Las Vegas Andrew
Kaufman (36) was arrested. In San Diego Navy SEAL Nicholas Bickle
(33) was arrested. They were accused of conspiring to smuggle and
sell weapons to an undercover federal agent in Nevada and Colorado.
Bickle, his close friend Paul, and their associate Kaufman allegedly
sold machine guns for $1,300 to $2,400 each, and handguns for $300
to an undercover federal agent who told them they would be shipped
to Mexico.
(AP, 11/4/10)

2010 Dec 14, In Nevada an armed
bandit escaped on a motorcycle after stealing $1.5 million in casino
chips from the Bellagio resort. On Feb 3 police identified suspect
Anthony M. Carleo (29) of Las Vegas as the bandit. Carleo was booked
under the name Anthony M. Assad. On Aug 23, 2011, Carleo was
sentenced to at least 3 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/15/10, p.A8)(SFC, 2/4/11, p.A7)(SFC,
8/24/11, p.A5)

2010 Dec 17, The states of
Arizona and Nevada sued Bank of America Corp., accusing the largest
US bank of routinely misleading consumers about home loan
modifications.
(Reuters, 12/17/10)

2011 Jan 7, In Nevada a tip led
police to the body of dancer Deborah Flores-Narvaez (31) in downtown
Las Vegas. Police booked her boyfriend, Jason Griffith (32), on
suspicion of murder. Griffith told police he had killed
Flores-Narvaez at his home on Dec 12. He chopped off her legs and
encased her naked body in concrete.
(SSFC, 1/9/11, p.A10)(SFC, 1/11/11, p.A6)

2011 Feb 9, US federal
prosecutors announced charges against 41 alleged gang members for
activities ranging from racketeering conspiracy to drug and gun
trafficking and murder in four states and Washington D.C. Some 29
defendants were arrested and more arrests are expected in connection
with the separate cases from Los Angeles; McAllen, Texas; Kansas
City; Washington D.C.; and Las Vegas.
(Reuters, 2/9/11)

2011 Mar 3, In Nevada Micaela
"Mickey" Costanzo (16), disappeared after track practice at West
Wendover High School. Her body was found March 5 in a shallow grave
in a remote desert area about five miles west of West Wendover, near
the Utah border.
(AP, 3/7/11)

2011 Apr 9, In Las Vegas Elena
Caro (42) died after a botched buttocks enhancement surgery in the
back room of a tile business. Two Colombia nationals, Ruben Dario
Matallana-Galvas (55) and Carmen Olfidia Torres-Sanchez (47), were
soon arrested as they tried to board a plane to return home.
(SFC, 4/12/11, p.A4)

2011 Apr 21, Nevada Sen. John
Ensign (52) announced that he will resign amid an ethics
investigation revolving around and extramarital affair with Cynthia
Hampton, a member of his campaign staff and providing lobbying work
to her husband. In April, 2008, Ensign’s parents had paid Douglas
and Cynthia Hampton $96,000. In 2009 Douglas Hampton said it was
severance pay.
(SFC, 4/22/11, p.A6)(SFC, 4/23/11, p.A4)

2011 May 16, Las Vegas marked
the end of an era as one of the US gambling mecca's last original
"Rat Pack" casino-hotels, the Sahara, closed its doors.
(AFP, 5/16/11)

2011 Jun, In Elko, Nevada,
Stephanie Gonzalez was killed in her home. An Elko justice of the
peace issued a warrant the arrest of Eduardo Puentes Estrada for
murder four days after her death. On Oct 26, 2014, Estrada (32) was
taken into custody after he apparently was involved in a fight in
Puerto Vallarta.
(AP, 10/28/14)

2011 Aug 16, California Gov.
Jerry Brown and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a pact with the
federal government to increase the clarity of Lake Tahoe by half a
foot per year for the next 65 years.
(SFC, 8/17/11, p.C1)

2011 Sep 6, In Nevada Eduardo
Sencion (32), armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, shot an entire
group of five uniformed National Guard members eating breakfast at
an IHOP, killing 3 of them and another person in a hail of gunfire.
Sencion of Carson City, also shot himself and later died at a
hospital.
(AP, 9/7/11)(SFC, 9/12/11, p.A4)

2011 Sep 16, In Reno, Nevada, a
World War II-era P-51 Mustang fighter plane competing in an event
described as a car race in the sky suddenly pitched upward, rolled
and did a nose-dive toward a crowded grandstand. 9 people were
killed and more than 60 injured. Pilot Jimmy Leeward (74) was among
those killed. A 10th victim died on Sep 19.
(AP, 9/17/11)(AP, 9/18/11)(SFC, 9/20/11, p.A6)

2011 Sep 23, In Nevada Jeffrey
Pettigrew, president of the San Jose chapter of the Hell’s Angels
motorcycle club, was shot and killed by Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez
(53), an alleged member of the rival Vagos motorcycle gang, at John
Ascuaga’s Nugget casino. Gonzalez was arrested 6 days later in San
Francisco. On Oct 15 Steve Tausan was shot and killed in San Jose,
Ca., at the funeral of Pettigrew. Police sought Steve Ruiz (38) for
the killing of Tausan. On Feb 25, 2012, police arrested Tausan at a
motel in Fremont, Ca.
(AP, 9/24/11)(SSFC, 10/16/11, p.A15)(SSFC,
10/23/11, p.A11)(SFC, 2/27/12, p.C1)
2011 Sep 23, In Nevada Cesar
Villagrana, a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, shot a
Vagos motorcycle gang member in the leg at John Ascuaga’s Nugget
casino. In 2013 Villagrana (38) pleaded guilty to the shooting and
faced 15 years in years.
(SFC, 7/23/13, p.A5)

2011 Sep 26, In Nevada Arthur
Gerald Jones (73), a former Chicago commodities trader arrested in
July, pleaded guilty to fraud. He had disappeared over three decades
ago from Highland Park, Illinois, and was discovered living in Las
Vegas under the assumed name of Joseph Richard Sandelli.
(Reuters, 9/26/11)

2011 Oct 7, A federal jury in
Las Vegas convicted Navy SEAL Nicholas Bickle on charges that he led
a scheme to sell machine guns and explosives from Iraq and
Afghanistan in the US. On July 17, 2012, Bickle was sentenced to 17½
years in prison.
(SFC, 10/8/11, p.A5)(SFC, 7/18/12, p.A8)
2011 Oct 7, Wired
magazine reported that a computer virus has infected networks used
by pilots who control US Air Force drones in places like Afghanistan
and Iraq. The spyware resisted efforts to remove it from computers
at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.A12)

2011 Oct 24, President Barack
Obama, speaking in Las Vegas, offered mortgage relief to hundreds of
thousands of Americans, his latest attempt to ease the economic and
political fallout of a housing crisis that has bedeviled him as he
seeks a second term.
(AP, 10/24/11)

2011 Nov 18, In Nevada a fire
swept throught an upscale community in the sierra foothills in
southwest Reno destroying 32 homes. Nearly 10,000 people were forced
to evacuate the area.
(SSFC, 11/20/11, p.A16)

2011 Dec 7, In Nevada 5 people
were killed when a helicopter flying tourists over the Hoover Dam
crashed into a mountain range bordering Lake Mead.
(SFC, 12/9/11, p.A11)

2012 Jan 13, In Nevada a
Monsignor Kevin McAuliffe (59) was sentenced to 3 years and one
month in prison and ordered to repay $650,000 he acknowledged
siphoning from his Las Vegas parish to support a gambling habit.
(SFC, 1/13/12, p.A6)\

2012 Jan 17, Grant Korgan (33),
of Incline Village, arrived at the South Pole on the 100-year
anniversary of the Terra Nova Expedition. Korgan, paralyzed in a
2010 snowmobiling accident, used a device called a Sitski to get
there. The expedition party included paralympian John Davis, two
guides and cinematographers who were shooting for a documentary
called "The Push: A South Pole Adventure." The film is expected to
be released later this year.
(AP, 1/18/12)

2012 Feb 4, Mitt Romney won
Nevada's Republican caucuses, grabbing the largest chunk of the
state's 28 delegates in the race for the Republican presidential
nomination. Romney won 48% of the vote; Gingrich won 23%, Ron Paul
19% and Rick Santorum 11%.
(SSFC, 2/5/12, p.A1)

2012 Feb 8, John Fairfax (74),
a self-proclaimed "professional adventurer," died near Las Vegas. He
became famous in 1969 as the first person to row solo across the
Atlantic Ocean. He also rowed across the Pacific with his
then-girlfriend Sylvia Cook, an ocean crossing that took him a full
year to complete, from April 1971 to April 1972. His exploits
inspired two memoirs: "Britannia: Rowing Alone Across the Atlantic"
and "Oars Across the Pacific," both published in the early 1970s.
(AFP, 2/19/12)

2012 Apr 4, It was reported
that Wang Yusuo, founder of China’s ENN Group, has teemed with
Nevada Senator Harry Reid to develop a solar plant in Laughlin,
Nevada. ENN offered $4.5 million for land assessed at $38.6 million.
(SFC, 4/4/12, p.D5)

2012 Apr 15, In Las Vegas
Ignacia Martinez (38) and her daughter Karla (10) were raped and
bludgeoned to death. Arturo Martinez, the husband and father, was
critically injured with head injuries. On April 27 police arrested
Bryan Clay (22) for the attacks.
(SSFC, 4/29/12, p.A9)

2012 Jun 22, North Las Vegas,
after five years of declining property taxes, massive layoffs and
questionable spending, declared a state of emergency, invoking a
rarely used state law crafted for unforeseen disasters.
(AP, 6/22/12)

2012 Oct 12, UC Berkeley law
students Justin Teixeira and Eric Cuellar were seen laughing and
throwing around the body of a dead helmeted guinea fowl at the
Flamingo casino in Las Vegas. On Dec 28 prosecutors filed animal
cruelty charges against both men. In 2013 Cuellar pleaded guilty and
was fined $200 and sentenced to 48 hours of community service. A 3rd
defendant Hazhir Kargaran (26) pleaded no contest to 3 misdemeanors
and was sentenced to 2 days in jail and 48 hours of community
service. Teixeira pleaded guilty to a felony animal killing was
sentenced to 6 months in boot camp and then probation. On may 13,
2014, Teixeira was sentenced to 4 years’ probation and monthly work
at an animal shelter.
(SFC, 12/28/12, p.A5)(SFC, 6/14/13, p.C8)(SFC,
5/13/14, p.A5)

2012 Oct 24, Police in southern
California arrested Akingide Cole of Palmdale for the theft of $1.6
million in casino chips from the Venetian resort in Las Vegas.
Detectives recovered $396,000 in chips.
(SFC, 10/31/12, p.A4)

2012 Dec 19, In Las Vegas
Olivia Culpo (20), a student at Boston University, became the new
Miss Universe, defeating dozens of contestants from six continents.
An American had not won the Miss Universe title since Brook Lee won
in 1997.
(AP, 12/20/12)

2012 Dec 21, Brenda Stokes
Wilson (50) slashed a co-worker at the Bellagio casino in las Vegas.
It was later learned that she had stabbed to death Jade Morris (10),
her ex-boyfriend’s daughter, whom she was supposed to take Christmas
shopping.
(SFC, 1/3/13, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/bznkswf)

2013 Jan 12, In Las Vegas
Mallory Hagan, a 23-year-old blonde from Brooklyn, N.Y., won the
Miss America crown after deftly dealing with a question about armed
guards in schools and raising the issue of child sexual abuse in her
contestant platform.
(AP, 1/13/13)

2013 Feb 21, Nevada Gov. Brian
Sandoval signed legislation legalizing online gambling.
SFC, 2/22/13, p.A7)
2013 Feb 21, In Las Vegas a
Maserati ran a red light at one of the Strip's busiest intersections
and smashed into a taxi that exploded into flames, killing taxi
driver Michael Boldon (62) and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund (48),
of Maple Valley, Wash. Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr., the driver of the
Maserati, was killed. Bullets had flown from a black Range Rover at
the Maserati as the vehicles raced toward a red light on the Strip.
The black SUV was found on Feb 23 as police named Ammar Harris (26)
in connection with the shooting and six-vehicle chain-reaction
carnage. Ammar Harris was arrested in Los Angeles on Feb 28.
(AP, 2/21/13)(AP, 2/24/13)(AP, 2/28/13)

2013 Mar 5, In Las Vegas
Xiao Ye Bai (26), convicted of being an enforcer for a Taiwan-based
criminal gang, was sentenced to life in a Nevada prison without
parole for murder in a bloody stabbing and slashing that left Wen
Jun Li dead and two people wounded in a Las Vegas karaoke bar in
July 2009.
(AP, 3/5/13)(SFC, 3/6/13, p.A4)

2013 Mar 18, In Nevada 7
Marines were killed when a mortar round exploded during a live-fire
training exercise at the Hawthorne Army Depot.
(SFC, 3/20/13, p.A8)

2013 Mar 30, In Nevada a
freeway crash on I-15 killed five Southern California family members
and injured two others. On April 10 Jean Ervin Soriano (18), a
juvenile detention escapee, was charged with seven felony charges of
driving under the influence. He had a blood-alcohol percentage of
0.12, well above the Nevada legal limit of 0.08 percent.
(AP, 4/10/13)

2013 Apr 6, In Nevada the body
of William McCune (62), the state’s chief insurance inspector, was
found in the Carson River in Carson City. McCune was reported
missing on April 4. Four suspects, believed to have stolen property,
were arrested in the case.
(SSFC, 4/7/13, p.A13)(SFC, 4/8/13, p.A5)

2013 Apr 22, As Nevada
legislators emotionally debated a move toward same-sex marriage,
Sen. Kelvin Atkinson rose to his feet and declared, "I'm gay."
Atkinson says that he quickly picked up hundreds of new friends on
Facebook and followers on Twitter.
(AP, 4/24/13)

2013 Apr 27, British anti-war
protesters demonstrated outside a Royal Air Force base used to
control drone flights over Afghanistan. Until this week, British
drones were operated only from a US Air Force base in Nevada.
(AP, 4/27/13)

2013 May 29, Nevada powerbroker
Harvey Whittemore (59) was convicted by a federal jury in Reno on
three counts tied to almost $150,000 illegally funneled to Sen.
Harry Reid (D-Nev) in 2007.
(SFC, 5/30/13, p.A5)

2013 May 31, Nevada's
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill to authorize driving
privilege cards for illegal immigrants in an action that is likely
to win favor in the state's large and growing Hispanic community.
(Reuters, 5/31/13)

2013 Jun 8, In Nevada officials
of Lake Mead urged people to avoid the Overton Arm of the lake
following the appearance of a mysterious brown foam over an 8-mile
area.
(SFC, 6/12/13, p.A5)

2013 Jun 11, Psychiatric
patient James Flavey Coy Brown filed a federal civil rights lawsuit
in Nevada accusing state officials of giving him a one-way ticket to
northern California, where he arrived without money and
identification. The complaint sought class-action status for as many
as 1,500 people that lawyers claim were bused since 2008 from Nevada
to almost every US state.
(SFC, 6/13/13, p.A8)

2013 Jun 28, It was reported
that a pneumonia outbreak has killed at least 20 bighorn sheep on
Old Dad Mountain in California’s Mohave National Preserve. Nevada
numbered some 10,000 adult animals in at least 60 mountain ranges.
(SFC, 6/28/13, p.D5)

2013 Jun 29, In Nevada Sarah
Guillot-Guyard (31), an acrobat and mother of two with Cirque du
Soleil, died in las Vegas after falling some 50 feet from a
production of “Ka" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
(SFC, 7/2/13, p.A12)

2013 Aug 13, A US federal
appeals court ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been
violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear
waste dump in Nevada.
(SFC, 8/14/13, p.A6)

2013 Aug 15, A CIA history was
released that referred to Area 51 in Nevada by name and described
some of the activities that took place there.
(SFC, 8/17/13, p.A5)

2013 Nov 1, In Nevada Lee Hosey
Jr. (25) was sentenced to 24-80 years in prison for a drunken
driving crash in Las Vegas on Sep 13, 2012, that left 4 people dead
and several injured.
(SFC, 11/2/13, p.A6)

2013 Dec 17, In Reno, Nevada, a
gunman opened fire at the Center for Advanced Medicine killing one
person and wounding two others before killing himself.
(SFC, 12/18/13, p.A8)

2013 Dec 30, The US FAA
selected six states (Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas
and Virginia) to test how drones can be more widely used in US
airspace. 24 states had competed for selection.
(SFC, 12/31/13, p.A6)

2014 Jan 27, In Las Vegas the
Prince and Princess pet store was torched. Firefighters rescued 27
puppies alive. Videos showed Gloria Eun Hye Lee, a US citizen
originally from South Korea, and a man torching the store. Lee was
arrested on Feb 7 and accomplice Kirk Bills was arrested in Indiana.
(AP, 2/8/14)

2014 Feb 11, The websites of
casinos owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. were hacked. These included
sites for a Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pa., as well as casinos in
Nevada and Macao.
(SFC, 2/12/14, p.A4)

2014 Feb 13, In Nevada Wayne
Burgarello shot and killed Cody Devine (34) and wounded Janai Wilson
(29) after confronting them sleeping at his vacant duplex in Sparks.
On May 29, 2015, Burgarello (74) was found not guilty after
insisting he was acting in self-defense.
(http://tinyurl.com/pks2m5o)(SSFC, 5/31/15, p.A6)

2014 Mar 1, In Nevada a US
fighter jet crashed during a training exercise because of a snow
storm in mountainous terrain. The pilot was later identified as
Marine Capt. Reid Nannen (32).
(SFC, 3/3/14, p.A6)(SFC, 3/10/14, p.A6)

2014 Apr 12, US officials ended
a stand-off with hundreds of armed protesters in the Nevada desert,
calling off the government's roundup of cattle it said were
illegally grazing on federal land and giving about 300 animals back
to the rancher who owned them.
(Reuters, 4/13/14)

2014 May 15, A federal judge in
Las Vegas imposed a 20-year sentence on David Camez (22) for his
role in what authorities say is an unprecedented criminal case
involving an international cybercrime syndicate with hundreds of
thousands of US victims. He was already is serving a seven-year term
in Arizona for similar crimes. He also was ordered to share in
restitution of nearly $51 million.
(AP, 5/16/14)

2014 Jul 8, Federal water
managers said drought in the southwestern US will deplete Nevada’s
vast Lake Mead this week to levels not seen since the Great
Depression in the 1930s.
(Reuters, 7/9/14)

2014 Jul 22, In Nevada Nathan
Stoliar (64) of Australia pleaded guilty to charges in federal court
for his role in a scheme to bilk a US biodiesel fuel program out of
more than $41 million. Federal prosecutors said Stoliar and a Las
Vegas man, James Jariv, used firms in Canada and Las Vegas to
fraudulently generate millions of dollars' worth of federally-funded
credits known as renewable identification numbers.
(AP, 7/23/14)

2014 Jul 31, Tesla said that it
broke ground in June at a site outside Reno for a potential
6,500-employee battery factory.
(SFC, 8/1/14, p.A1)

2014 Aug 25, In Nevada the
Burning Man festival in the desert north of Reno, scheduled to open
at 10am, was closed to new arrivals due to rain.
(SFC, 8/26/14, p.C2)

2014 Aug 28, In Nevada a woman
(29) died after falling under a large vehicle at the Burning Man
counter-cultural festival.
(AFP, 8/28/14)

2014 Sep 8, In Nevada an
experimental plane crashed killing pilot Lee Behel (64) as he
attempted to qualify for the Reno National Championship Air Races.
(SFC, 9/16/14, p.A6)

2014 Oct 7, A US federal
appeals court in San Francisco struck down Nevada and Idaho’s bans
on same-sex marriage. The ruling also applies to all nine states in
the court’s territory and will overturn marriage bans in Montana,
Alaska and Arizona.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A6)

2014 Nov 6, A Guam jury
convicted three people of mailing drugs from Las Vegas to Guam. Nine
other defendants signed plea deals in the case.
(AP, 11/6/14)

2014 Nov, SF-based Uber
suspended ride services in Nevada after a state judge banned its
unlicensed operations statewide. Uber had refused to seek licensing
claiming it was a technology company, not a motor carrier.
(SSFC, 11/30/14, p.D2)

2014 Dec 9, In Nevada a woman
and two men from China pleaded guilty in federal court in Las Vegas
to reduced charges in what prosecutors say amounted to a $13 million
illegal Internet gambling operation broken up by an FBI raid at
high-roller suites at Caesars Palace.
(AP, 12/10/14)

2015 Feb 12, In Las Vegas Tammy
Meyers (44) was shot in the head outside her home in a Las Vegas
cul-de-sac shortly before midnight after confrontations that began
when she was giving her daughter (15) an after-hours driving lesson
and the girl honked at a driver she felt was speeding. The mother's
life-support was disconnected on Valentine's Day. On Feb 19 police
arrested Erich Nowsch (19) on suspicion of murder.
(http://tinyurl.com/odzz2sf)(SFC, 2/20/15, p.A7)

2015 May 2, In Las Vegas boxer
Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines lost by unanimous decision to
American Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a 12-round fight.
(AP, 5/3/15)

2015 May 4, In Las Vegas the
2,075-room Riviera Hotel and Casino closed. The 26-acre site was
purchased last February by the Los Vegas Convention and Visitor
Authority.
(SFC, 5/5/15, p.D4)